The Wizards of Roswell
by Chris Kenworthy
Summary: Max is a teenage wizard, specializing in healing in Roswell, New Mexico; his sister Isabel and friend Michael are also wizards. When Liz Parker is shot in the Crashdown, Max has to save her life, which draws him into an adventure with vampires.
1. Chapter 1

"So, Maxwell, what do you think of Liz Parker, really??" Michael needled me as we sat in the Crashdown cafe booth.

"Umm... she's cute," I managed to say, about as nonchalantly as I could manage.

Michael raised his eyebrows. "*Just* cute?"

"No, not JUST cute -- she's really smart too," I shot back with a smile, and Michael shook his head. I met his gaze head-on, thinking about all that we'd been through. Michael had been my best friend for eight years, pretty much ever since my sister and I met him - she offered to share her lunch with him, because he didn't have any cafeteria money, just... well, that's a long story and I'm not going to get into it now.

We probably seem like an odd pairing. I'm the son of a relatively rich lawyer, and Michael's an orphan - his father was a construction worker who got knocked off an office tower when he was five, and then his mom was killed in a traffic accident five months later. No next of kin could be located, so Michael ended up in the foster care system, and right now he's living with a guy named Hank Whitmore down at the town trailer park... in fact, I guess you could say that Hank was trailer trash. (Some people have tried to apply the same term to Michael himself... but most of them regret it sooner or later.) Hank himself treats Michael kinda like a sack of trash, and that disappoints me, esepcially since Michael won't take abuse from anyone else in his life. He could use his art to protect himself from Hank so easily too, except that he doesn't want to do anything that could attract attention to us and spoil the secret.

"Okay, your turn," I said, trying to deflect the fifth degree back on its source. "What about Maria DeLuca? I've seen you looking at her. Got a little sweet spot for your own waitress, maybe??"

Michael sighed. "Well, she's definitely hot - especially with the short hair, though she was really pretty even before she chopped it all off." He sighed slightly. "There's something about her beyond her looks too... a kind of energy, a hint of attitude." He sighed meaningfully, even if I couldn't put my finger on just what the meaning was.

"A hint?" I laughed. "They call her hurricane DeLuca. I think that's more than just a hint," I commented.

"Oh, come on Maxwell. You should know better than to put much stock in gossip," Michael said. "But here's the thing. Maria has never - not once - looked in my direction without rolling her eyes. After a little while I start to notice things like that." He sighed and went back to his plate of Saturn rings.

I sighed a little bit myself, feeling for Michael's angst. Just then it started to penetrate my awareness that an argument was starting up a few tables away. Two big, kinda mean-looking guys, talking about money in heated tones. The sound of a chair falling away as one of them suddenly jumped to his feet, and then the other. A voice that I didn't recognize called out 'He's got a gun!' Somebody at the next table to the fighters hurried away.

I was looking right at Liz when it happened - not quite sure why, unless it was just some kind of impulse to make sure that she was all right. But she definitely wasn't. Just as I spotted her, a huge thundercrack of noise rang out through the entire room, nearly knocking me aside, and a very ugly spurt of dark red suddenly imploded in Liz's uniform, right around her upper stomach, on one side. Her body swayed slightly, and she got a confused look on her face that still makes my heart break when I think about it. Because she hadn't yet figured out what had happened. She couldn't grasp the idea that she had been shot, and was probably only a few seconds away from death.

I'm lucky that I figured out so fast. Not panicking isn't exactly in the 'luck' category - the past few years have gone a long way towards training me to keep my head in a crisis, to do what needs getting done. I hurried forward, only one thought uppermost in my head. I had to throw caution to the winds, and act fast, or Entropy would claim a human life today. A pretty girl who's in my biology class.

Liz had crumpled into a nasty-looking sprawl by the time I was approaching her. Michael was moving too, and that was good. Maybe he'd try to cloak Liz and I with a small wizardry to keep anybody from noticing anything. I know that he still keeps enough supplies around for a quick perception alteration, wherever he goes. But that was only a fleeting flash of thought through my mind at that time. The rest of my attention was focused on the requirements for my own wizardry.

Healing is my specialty as a wizard. At sixteen, I'm a little bit on the young side for specializing, but I'm not getting any younger, and the Advisories have suggested that if I'm comfortable sticking to my specialty as much as possible, I'll probably be able to do more good with it as I get older. Healing wonds of any kind - broken bones, cuts, scrapes, and yes, gunshots - doesn't require any physical supplies in the usual sense, and I'm familiar enough with that kind of spell that I wouldn't need to stop and prepare anything to help Liz. That just left the two big requirements.

First requirement - the wizard performing a healing must willingly take the pain of the injured party onto him or herself. That might be a tough one, or not - it was hard to tell if Liz was really suffering or not. Second requirement. The wizard must shed his or her own blood. A kind of symbolic sacrifice.

Another stroke of luck, if you want to look at it like that - Liz had knocked aside a board with plenty of kitchen implements from the diner counter when she fell, and now they were scattered across the floor near her. I found the sharpest knife that I could in one second, hoped that it was mostly sanitary, and drew the blade into the palm of my hand. A wave of pain rushed up my arm, and more blood started to drip down onto Liz's uniform, to join her own blood that had welled up from beneath. Racing against time, I said the words of the wizardly Speech that made up the spell that I needed - mostly silently, but a few of them came out as mumbles. That didn't matter. And at the same time. I opened myself up to the pain - not just the pain in my own hand, but every bit of pain that Liz herself was feeling.

As I worked through the words of the spell, (nineteen words, fifty-five or so syllables,) the pain grew inside me, making it harder and harder to concentrate. Any muffed syllable would ruin everything now - there was absolutely no time to start over. I could tell that much - The damage to her internal organs, the blood loss, was already nearly too much for my spell to repair, and if wizardry failed for an instant everything would get much worse. As the spell drew to a close I looked through her to find out what had happened to the bullet. There was an exit wound - it wouldn't be inside her anymore. That meant I could worry about it later.

With the last word of the spell, pain burst me so hard that I probably blacked out for a few seconds. Guess that's something to remember - though not too hard, or maybe next time I wouldn't have the nerve to try. Liz had looked peaceful enough as she lay there that it had been hard for me to believe that there was much pain. But Michael was shaking my shoulder. "Time to make ourselves scarce."

Yeah. But first... I shook my head to clear her vision and look down at Liz, who was just opening her eyes. Reached up, took a bottle of ketchup that was still on the counter above. Meant to crack it against a chair, but it burst in two just from the grip I had on it. Wild. I dumped the sweet red sauce all over Liz's uniform, covering her blood, my blood, and obscuring the bullet hole. "You spilled the ketchup when you fell," I muttered, not sure if I was expecting Liz to believe that, or if I was just giving her a cover story to tell anybody else. She stared right at me for a second, an expressive stare that made me feel funny inside. Then Michael was pulling me away, and I went willingly, knowing that it'd be best if we weren't around there any longer. I snuck one look behind as Michael hurried me out the front doors of the dining room, and saw that Liz was standing up now, hands linked over the worst ruined part of her uniform, and still gazing wonderingly in my direction.

Once we were in my Jeep and heading east, I turned a bit of attention to Michael. "What kind of sense alteration did you use?"

Michael stared at me with about the same look he'd use on a Denesev who'd invited him to jam his bare feet into the ground and enjoy a nice 'root.' "Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Maxwell? I didn't cast any kind of Wizardry back there." Oh. Guess that'll teach me to make assumptions. "Come on - it would have been a waste of a perfectly good converter."

Oh, right. Michael's favorite broad-sensory illusion spell requires a kind of tiny vibratory ocilloscope converter, and each one is only good for one casting - something in the mechansim gets cracked at the end of the Wizardy's duration. "And what are you so worried about? Nobody in there would notice or believe a Wizardry no matter what they saw - except for Liz, and me doing an illusion wouldn't do much good on her."

Hrmm. Michael might have a point - that I was feeling nervous about Liz's reaction to what had happened, and getting grumpy with Michael even though he couldn't have shielded me from that part of the situation if he tried. "Maria might have noticed," I said lamely.

"Not after I told her to call the ambulance," Michael said. "Sorry, but it was the only diversionary trick I could think of on short notice."

A thick silence settled on the Jeep as I drove home.

-----------

I parked in the driveway, and Michael and I went inside still without any words being spoken. I was feeling drained from the energy outlay of the healing spell - fixing all of the havoc that the bullet played with Liz's system and making sure that she wouldn't die from the blood she lost had a price, and then there was the lingering effects of the pain on top of that. Michael seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, and I didn't feel like following him in there. We came into the front hall and got a good look at my sister and her boyfriend making out on the couch.

"Hey! Come on, Izzie, I thought that we had a deal," I complained out loud, ducking back towards the front door so that I didn't need to see any more of Alex's tongue. "You guys wouldn't do that out in the shared rooms of the house while I was around."

"Well, how exactly was I expected to know that you were around?" Isabel asked out loud. I still wasn't looking, but presumably her lips were not still locked to another pair of lips, so maybe in a few seconds it would be safe to come out.

"I get the impression that hearing a car pull into the driveway and immediately rushing for cover is customary," Michael pointed out dryly. "Not that I've ever had the opportunity to try it myself, but the idea seems quite sound. If the two of you were so singlemindedly absorbed that you didn't even hear us... then you have nobody to blame but yourselves.

"We thought that you two would be downtown for, ooh, for about an hour longer at least," Isabel argued, not really adressing Michael's point. "You must've hardly even had time to order your food. What... did something go wrong?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I muttered sourly.

"I... maybe I should really be going," Alex said, his voice betraying some nervousness. I felt some sympathy for *him*, actually. Alex seems like a good guy, and I know that it freaks him out when Isabel and I spat like this, superficially over her relationship with him. It's nothing personal about him... I guess I'm just a little freaked out by the idea of my little sister, (younger than me by a whole six minutes,) usually so calm and in charge of her life, going totally gaga over *any* guy. (Not that she's even been paying attention to guys as a species for that long, but you know what I mean, I think.) She's so deeply in love or something like it, and I guess I do worry that she's going to get her heart broken. She'd say that I don't have a right to get overprotective about her... maybe I don't...

I headed up to my room, started on some English homework, and then picked up my Wizards manual and tooled around in it a little while - logging a journal entry about what had happened, and then reviewing the specifics about healing gunshot wounds to make sure that I didn't miss anything in the heat of the moment. I was deeply into the detailed effects of temporary cavitation on the inelastic tissues of the liver, when there was a soft knock on the door. I looked up and saw that Isabel was there in the doorway. "Umm... I, uh, I thought I felt a familiar twinge of power. It was, um, was kinduv hard to be sure under the circumstances."

I smiled at the opening line and spent a moment just looking at Isabel. Not like staring at her or anything, though... well, I do have to admit that she's a beautiful girl. Nearly as tall as me, eye-catching golden blonde hair... (actually she dies it, when she was younger she was almost as dark as me, but it LOOKS perfectly natural on her.) Isabel has the kind of face that Leonardo da Vinci would have loved to paint, and the kind of figure that Hugh Hefner would probably like to immortalize in something more glossy. Right now, she was wearing typically stylish casuals - a black blouse with white detailing, designer blue jeans, and brown leather boots. "Yeah, umm... there was a fight in the cafe," I said as casually as I could. "One of them had a gun, and the other tried to take it away, I think. In the struggle - one of the waitresses was shot."

"Oh, my god." Isabel rushed into the room and sat down on the side of my bed. "Is... was it Liz? Is she okay??"

"Pretty much, yeah," I said. "Err, that is, it was definitely Liz, and I think she was in pretty good condition when we left." I hefted the book. "May need to try to find some excuse to check out her liver, just to be sure that she doesn't get complications in a few months... or a few decades. But I saved her life." And I sighed heavily.

"And... and that isn't good news?" Isabel probed.

"Well... it's better than the alternative, of course," I disclaimed. "I... I guess I'm just wondering if she realized any of what actually happened to her. If she'll get up the nerve to ask me about it at school." Something else suddenly occured to me. "If somebody's going to find the bloodstained bullet. Dammit, I knew I forgot something when Michael dragged me outta there."

Isabel smiled. "It's going to be okay somehow. Count on that." She stretched slightly. "I've got a slightly different kind of work that you can help with if you're up for it."

"I dunno, I feel like shit," I mumbled. "What is it this time??"

"A tree... I think it's the big pine five blocks left," Isabel replied. "It's been having nightmares for weeks now... and apparently, when a tall tree gets recurring nightmares, that's bad news." She sighed. "I'm going to go in and see if I can help, but plants are weird. Thought it would help if somebody gave me a lifeline to pull on if things got too messy."

I smiled at the thought. Isabel's own particular talent seemed to have to do with dreams... lucid dreaming, travelling mentally into the dreams of others... that'll probably be her specialty, though she hasn't focused on it so deeply as I have with healing. In case you're wondering, Michael hasn't really specialized much yet, though he seems to spend a lot of time on offensive and defensive spells. Isabel sometimes teases him that he's going to end up tapped as an Advisory if he doesn't pick a major - which Michael doesn't like the idea of because he doesn't see himself as an authority figure or having much patience with other people asking him very basic questions. He's got a point... but then, maybe Isabel will be right in the end. Much stranger things have happened before.

"Pine tree dreams?" I repeated. "Umm... not sure. Were you going to go in soon??"

"Pretty much as soon as I knew that it was asleep... I guess." Isabel shrugged. "But it probably doesn't matter so much. A normal healthy tree can apparently dream for over fifty-eight hours at a stretch - did you know that??"

"Umm, I have to admit that I did not," I said, sighing. "Okay, which lifeline did you want, or did you have any idea yet?"

"Oh, index under 'Retrievals and connectors,' secondary mindscape variant," Isabel said casually. I flipped to the comprehensive index, (which usually took up about a fourth of the fairly substantial book,) and noticed the subtle sighing sounds of the Wizard's manual's contents shifting after I touched the entry Isabel had names, and a page number appeared.

Wizard's manuals do this a lot, by the way, in case you didn't know much about our Art. They're pretty magical for their own part, and switching their contents to better serve the needs of their owner is one of the most common ways that this shows up. Rewriting pages with new content, or even adding new pages and removing them again when they're no longer needed. That's why my index is so big - it's actually referencing a base of text that would fill up the largest library in town. Oh, and there are also functions where you can change the pages yourself... like the journal entries I mentioned a little while back.

So I flipped quickly over to the page number indicated. "Pretty simp..." Isabel started, but I cut her off with a wave and read up on the entire entry before turning to her. "Why is there an extradimensional component in here? We surely don't need th..."

"Oh yeah?" Isabel interrupted me in turn, and arched a well-groomed eyebrow. "Are you absolutely, one hundred percent convinced that tree dreamscapes don't have an extradimensional component?"

That shut me up for a moment. I knew, vaguely, that some people's mindscapes had aspects that extended them into other worlds, (and the question of where in our world the dream planes of everybody fit is apparently a very complicated and much-debated question,) but I wasn't sure about trees. "Okay, well, give me a little while. Just want to listen to some tunes and maybe fool around on the computer."

"Kay," Isabel agreed. "Just don't waste too much energy on that thing. Entropy's running!" And with that parting shot, she took off again.

----------

I did help Isabel with her dream lifeline later that night, though she wasn't sure how much it had helped. Struggling under the drain of helping Liz and Isabel both, I didn't sleep well until about two AM, and then managed to turn off my alarm clock without waiting up, so I had to rush through showering and changing, and skip breakfast just to make it to first period on time. (Hardly seems like it's worth the effort, but that's high school for you.)

Fast forward a little bit. Lunch time. As horrible as the cafeteria food at West Roswell generally is, I ate more than usual of it, because of having missed breakfast. Busy wizards need plenty of energy, and diet is a part of that. Wasn't going to find anything especially healthy around here, but even hydrogenated oil is good energy as long as it all gets used. Well, anyway, after eating, and trading some unimportant small talk with Michael, I headed out to the edge of the school field to get a little bit of fresh air before biology class... and seeing Liz again.

Liz is my class lab partner - we ended up sitting next to each other the first day, when the official seating chart was drawn up, more or less, but it's been fun working with her the past two weeks and change. Both of us pretty much know the simple experiments that we've been doing backward and forward already from after school junior scientist sessions, so we've had a chance to talk about stuff while going through the motions... never anything really personal, but you can never tell when a discussion of music or popular tv shows will happen to hit on a reference that betrays a little more depth.

So anyway, I was wandering around the edge of the schoolyard, when behind me I heard a cat meowing. *Greetings, Honored Healer, and well met on the path of the Powers. I come to you in need of aid.*

I turned around as the meaning of the Speech came to me, delivered in the feline recension. The cat was small and a little on the skinny side, but not a ktten anymore - maybe fifteen or sixteen months old, his coat a pretty golden-bronze with white patches. As I looked at the kitty, a few unusual things about what he had said penetrated. He had spoken directly in the Feline version of the Speech, not in cat-speak, Ailurin, which I could have also understood through Wizardry, ('via the Speech,' as some wizards say.) That was kinduv unusual, though not as rare as a non-wizard human knowing the Speech. And the formal phrasing was one laden with tradition: *not* a wording that a cat wizard would have used, (that would have probably used 'I am on errantry...' to start off,) but evidently someone had trained this cat well in old-fashioned courtesies due to a Wizard.

He wasn't lying about being in need, either - one of the hind feet dragged behind him, totally useless, and the other one seemed to be half lame as well... when he moved, he was pulling himself forward only by his front paws, which had to be incredibly difficult. There were a few nasty scrapes around his hind flanks and rump too. "Oh, Powers among us!" I wasn't looking forward to having to do another tricky healing, but there was no way I'd have the heart to turn this customer down - even if he hadn't said hello so politely. In fact, refusing a plea for help is always tricky as a wizard, and can come very close to breaking the Wizard's oath... we sign up for this gig to serve all life, to defend and heal, whenever it's the right thing to do - not just when it's convenient or easy. The power of a wizard doesn't come for free, and this obligation is part of it.

I stepped closer to the cat and sat down, near enough that he could come closer without too much trouble. *Hello, there, guy,* I said, in as close an approximation as I could come to the same dialect of the speech that the cat had used, though he probably understood english fairly well. *What went wrong??*

*One of those big SUVs drove right over my butt while I was sleeping,* he replied. *And if you're asking why I was sleeping anywhere that's drivable... well, that's kinduv a long story, and some carelessness on my part. So, how about it, Doc?? Can you do anything to help??"

*No rest for the good of heart,* I said. *By the way, I'm Max.*

*Yeah, I've heard of you, though haven't made the acquaintance before.* Hmm... that was interesting. I haven't spent that much time with any cats before - so who told this one my name? *I'm Moawah.*

*Alright then, let's have a look at you.* Moawah had crawled close, and after extending his hands close for a moment and waiting for a reaction, Max picked him up carefully around the mid-body and examined the wounds around his hind legs and 'butt.' It was pretty bad - broken bones, a little bleeding, and... *Come on, you're holding out on me man. Cars are nasty, but there's no way that a rubber tire would give you scrapes like that. And... and what happened to the tip of your tail??* It definitely looked like some of it was missing there.

*Umm... I ran into a few human kits on the way to find help,* Moawah admitted, sounding very nervous about saying that. *They, umm... they weren't terribly helpful. Let's not talk about that part.*

For a second, I was furious at the idea that american kids would torture an already wounded cat like that... but somehow I couldn't muster up much surprise. *Alright, let's get started. I, umm, I don't think I'll be able to restore what you lost from the tail tho.*

*Ahh, that's okay. Easier to keep it up perpendicular this way. Just make sure that it won't start bleeding on me or anything.*

*Alright.* I tried to focus on the healing spell, but something about that comment was nagging at me. A cat keeping his tail up perpendicular... *You're a TS Eliot fan?*

*Well, I haven't really read him, but I saw some of 'Cats' and quite liked it. Again, it's a long...* subdued yowl of pain, *...story.*

*Right, sorry.* But 'the naming of cats' was running through my mind as I prepared. 'But I tell you, a cat must have a name that's particular / A name that's peculiar, and more dignified / Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular / Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride??' Eventually I had everything sorted out again, except for a way to shed a little blood again. Looked over at Moawah. *Can you help me out here? I need to shed my own blood to complete the healing, and I don't have anything sharp on me.*

*You probably don't want me to scratch you with these guys,* he said, waving a claw regretfully. *Cat scratches infect people easily, don't they??*

I laughed. *Not THAT easily. I'll go and get my hand washed as soon as you're better." Maowah still hesitated. *What, come on, are you a sissy-puss?*

*Okay, okay.* He reached out with one claw and delivcately tore a bit of the skin of my forearm open, just enough to let a few drops of blood well up, bright and red. I repeated the spell, not quite the same variant that I'd used on Liz but remarkably close, and the world seemed to crouch close, listening, curious as to what I was asking of it. (Most times the world is more of a leaner than a croucher - maybe this time it was just because I was working a spell while sitting down.)

And the sensation of pain came through again, not a fierce burning agone like Liz had felt, but more of an awkward dull numbing ache in my legs and lower abdomen... the sensations still strong and compelling enough that it was hard to remember that it wasn't really my legs that were ruined, that I'd be able to stand up just fine once the wizardry was done. Finally magic let us both go, and Moawah jumped to all fours, testing his hnd legs, waving his tail back and forth in nervous expectation, and then raising it in an arc of pleased approval. I wasn't sure if I was interpreting his tail gestures through wizardry or just ordinary human common sense.

Moawah turned to face me, and then did a startled take. *Uh-oh. Sorry doc, but I think you had an audience.* Uh-oh indeed. I turned around, toward the chain link fence, and just beyond, stood Liz Parker, her eyes wide. "You... you saved that cat," Liz breathed, in a breath of a whisper. "His... Its legs were lamed, I'm *sure* they were. And you fixed them!!" She took a deep breath. "Did you fix me too, Max??"

I tried to say something, but my own voice might as well have gone to stay inside Liz. "And... and you were TALKING to him, in little mews and humms of cat talk. He spoke, and you understood him, and talked back. I... it sounds crazy, but I can't think of any other explanation."

"That's not really cat talk in the usual sense," I said awkwardly. "But yeah, we could communicate with each other - probably best to leave it there for now. Moawah, Liz Parker, Liz this is Moawah. He, umm... he came and asked me for my help." I sighed, as Liz seemed to be turned completely speechless by this turn of events. "Umm... I actually need to go and wash this arm now," and I showed Liz the scratch, "and make sure that it doesn't get infected." That wasn't just a good idea - I needed to follow through on the promise that I'd made to Maowah, even in such a relatively trivial way.

"We'll talk more, umm..." I suddenly realized that by the time I'd finished with cleaning the small wound, it would be time for class. And there was no way that we could talk about wizardry surrounded by a roomfull of biology juniors and a teacher who'd rather have classes in theater or spanish lit than anything in the sciences. "Umm... after eighth period this afternoon??" I waved by to Maowah, who waved his tail happily and took off in the opposite direction from the school., which I started heading towards. Liz paced me on the other side of the fence.

Liz looked very doubtful about that. "You aren't going to try to avoid me or sneak away without telling me what's GOING on?" She looks really cute when she's pissed... long straight dark hair, five feet and two inches of slender but feminine figure, big emotive dark eyes... she was wearing a dark pink t-shirt and blue jeans today, very simple clothes, but they set off her mesmerizing beauty perfectly...

I took a breath and tried something. *I promise to tell you what happened yesterday, and what you need to know about me, once we're finished with our classes today,* I told Liz in the most common human recension of the Speech. Or at least, that's the gist of it, because I had to be a lot more precise than that, or I'd have to tell Liz about what everybody in the galaxy was doing for all of the time period from midnight to midnight yesterday, and so on. Fortunately, the speech lends itself to such precisions, and the vow that I intended to uphold wasn't much longer in the speech than the simplification I gave is in English. I watched Liz carefully for her reaction - it's always a little interesting to watch the effect of the speech on people who didn't know that it existed.

"Whoa," she breathed. "I... I *understood* that, even though it wasn't in a language that I've ever learned." She shook her head, looking a little overwhelmed. Maybe I should try not to make things any more confusing for her... but that would be kind of hard to do while keeping my promise, come to think of it. "And... and I believe you, in a way that's so complete that it seems strange."

That's an effect of the speech, usually. It's impossible, (or at least dreadfully stupid,) to make factually false statements in any variant of it, and if you make a vow in the true speech, you need to at least attempt to follow it through, even if you're not a wizard. Most people who hear the speech recognize the inherent truth of it that underlies those principles, though some hearts and minds are so clouded with deception that they don't know inherent truth even when it's biting them.

"I'm curious, what did it sound like to you?" I asked. "Aside from what you understood in my meaning. How did the words and phrases sound?"

"Umm... hard to say," Liz admitted. "Very foreign-sounding and flowing, kinduv elegant. Maybe a bit like Greek or Turkish?"

"Hmm." I considered that, and didn't really have much of a reaction to it. "Okay, just wondered."

So I went and washed my arm. Thought about trying to find a bandaid, but there really wasn't time, and the air would probably do it good. I hurried to class and took the seat beside Liz, wondering if she would say anything out of the usual.

I was waiting a little while. The teacher gave a distinctly half-hearted spiel about primordial life and one-celled orgamisns, and then we each took a few little drops of water out of a big jar at the front, and tried to spot some protozoans inside the drops, under microscope slides. (I'm not quite sure where the original protozoans in the jar had come from, but they seemed to be doing very well - there was no trouble in finding them - we both made a lot of notes, and Liz pulled out some blank white typing paper and did a few really good freehand sketches of the tiny amoeba-like critters.

I stayed at the microscope longer than Liz did, wondering about these beings, so unimaginably tiny that they were totally out of my frame of reference, that I couldn't even SEE them without using a contraption capable of bending visible light rays to a precise pattern... or unless I employed a wizardry to do something similar. But they were part of the forces that I served, the power of Life itself, just as much as an elephant or a Rierhate Galomphornuss - or a person was. Maybe creatures like this were some of the first to ever be created on Earth, or to develop... wizardly sources seem to be uncertain whether life evolved and called forth the Powers to protect and nurture it, or if the Powers were begotten first and created temporal life. (I've even heard theories that it was Life that caused the big bang, which seems a bit circular, but oh well.)

As I stared at them, it seemed as if I could faintly hear them whispering one word in the speech, but couldn't identify the meaning in it, if there was one. All of a sudden Liz sighed softly and I looked up. "Do you ever wonder about... about life forms from other planets, Max? I mean, aliens are kinduv a joke here in Roswell, but I wonder about it occasionally. If their cells are at all like ours, I mean."

"Hmm." I had to think a bit on this one. Now, I've met people from very different planets... not too many, because my practice of the Art hasn't taken me that far from Roswell... in fact, most of the aliens I've met have been ones that have come here, actually. I go to the moon - just about every young wizard goes to the moon sometimes to hang out, it's kinduv a rite of passage thing. And I've been to Mars once on business - a few Denesiv on vacation got attacked by Granthar mercenaries... (don't ask me why wandering trees would want to vacation on a planet that's all dust and craters,) and I was tapped for a hastily assembled rescue mission, mostly in case they needed medical assistance.

"I, umm, I don't know, but somehow I doubt it," I admitted. "The universe is so amazingly complicated that most aliens would probably look different from us on the inside - and on the outside too," I said. "They'd have to, to live in other environments and other ecologies and survive. On the other hand... there are probably similarities just where you least expect them - the possibilities aren't infinite, and sometimes there's probably only one or two ways of getting the job done. If you look at the stars and galaxies - they're just about all we can see of the universe outside our own backyard, and there's incredible variety in some ways, and a lot of surprising repetition in others. Probably the same way with living beings."

"Yeah, that's a good point," Liz admitted. For a second I was wondering if she'd give me a followup that would be harder to handle... something more specifically about aliens in Roswell, maybe. Perhaps she was going to, but then the teacher came around, and said in a bored tone that if we'd already finished the regular assignment, perhaps we'd like to try an extra level for extra credit... adding other environmental factors to the protozoan medium and observing their reaction. I looked at the list of available 'factors' with a sinking feeling... acid, chlorine bleach, ammonia...

"Most of these will kill them," I said flatly.

"Well, maybe. Don't you have to do the experiment to find out for sure?" Ms Willemin said, with that completely uncaring smile, and went over to try to keep Pam Troy from roasting her protozoans by lighting the gas supply - without hooking up a bunsen burner. I looked up at Liz and smiled a nervous smile, wondering if she'd think I was being silly or crazy. I knew that the protozoan's didn't matter much to my own life, but I'd got an odd sense of connection to them from my observations, and I was feeling extremely iffy about the ramifications of my oath and carrying out an experiment that would kill them. I know, technically the oath doesn't say anything about how you interact with other life forms when you're NOT using wizardry, but that was loophole-ey. It's still against the spirit of my art, as I see it, to kill even so simple and unintelligent creatures just for the sake of an extra credit grade, and making an observation that would just confirm what we already knew in theory.

"Hmm," Liz said, looking at the sheet more closely. "Well, we could try the drop of diluted fructose syrup. I have to say, I'm not sure if that would hurt them or help them, but it seems worth a shot." She looked up at me and smiled, and I felt relief that she seemed to be looking for a way out for me. I scanned over the list myself, (just to see if there weren't any safer alternatives,) and nodded.

"Let's go for it."

The smallest drop of diluted syrup that we could make wasn't much smaller than the protozoan water still on the slide, but when we capped the slide again and put it under the microscope, it was clear that the impact had been a bit of a disruption to their culture. Most of the protos had been splashed away from where the new drop had landed, but none of them seemed to be in extreme difficulty - in fact, some of them seemed happier and more content with their lot now, though it was hard to say if I had decided that from visual observations or my wizard's senses. I let Liz take a look through the scope.

"It's working," she said. "I think that they're eating the fructose sugar."

"Me too," I agreed. "They'd better not have too much sugar and get all hyper."

Liz laughed. "Yeah, it's not really a balanced diet for growing organisms. They need ionic minerals, and amino acids, and..." Liz was still peering into the microscope eyepiece, and she cut off suddenly. "Oops, my mistake, I guess they're not growing much bigger after all."

"What? What did you see, Liz?" She turned away, but not before I caught a hint of a pink flush on her cheeks. "Liz Parker, are you embarassed because you caught a protozoan reproducing itself? Dividing itself, I guess I should say."

She turned back. "It... it sounds silly when you say it that way, but yeah. I mean, if they have any equivalent to... to the sort of natural functions we feel private about, it's that. I realize that they don't really feel any particular way about it, but..."

"Oh, I'm not absolutely certain about that," I said softly. Liz looked up at me in surprise, and I continued very quietly, not wanting anyone else to overhear this. "They don't have feelings the way that we do, anything like, but I'm not sure that you can be alive at all without having some sort of... some sort of reactions to the fundamental processes of your life, and how are those different from our basic emotional drives? Ours involve complex neurons and brain chemicals, but that's just a detail." I shrugged. "I think he's - or they're - proud of what just happened, in an odd way."

Liz shook her head slightly. "Max Evans, you're kinda weird." Soon enough after that, it was time enough to clean up - we put our protozoans back into the jar, along with whatever fructose syrup was left, for all of their friends to munch on, and Liz slipped an eyedropper full of some fluid that I think had amino acids and mineral salts into the jar as well. Then, well, we had to go our seperate ways, as I headed off to spanish lit. (Ms Willemin, eat your heart out!)

But Liz was waiting for me at my locker at the end of the day. In a way, that felt kind of weird... I couldn't help but play another scenario through my head that would explain WHY she was there - something that involved... well, involved dinners and movies, and kissing her. Oh well. I put my books away, and then led the way off to my Jeep, neither of us really saying much. I was glad that Isabel hadn't ridden to school with me, and hadn't talked to me about getting a ride home with me. Once we had left the school building far behind, Liz groaned and said, "Okay, level with me, Max Evans. Are you some kind of weird alien in human form, whose extraterrestrial powers gives you the ability to either save people's lives or kill with a thought? Sorry, but I've just gotta know."

I nearly crashed into a parked car.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	2. Chapter 2

"How about there in the park?" I suggested, pointing, and after a moment Liz nodded. I parked across the street, and we headed into the green space. I was thinking of the benches, but Liz sat herself down in the corner of a clear playing field, and I grinned and took my place opposite her.

"Okay, let's see. As I said, no, I'm not an alien. I'm very human, just as much so as you are."

"Okay. And the reason that a perfectly normal human could heal me from a bullet wound is..."

"Well, I never said I was 'normal,'" I said. The joke fell flat on Liz's face. "Sorry. Umm... simple answer, I'm a wizard, I have powers that you might find a little bit unusual, and healing is my specialty..."

"Alright, hold up just a second," Liz insisted, keeping her voice down, but every word powerful and intense. "Wizardry? As in fairy-tale magic?? I... I think it'd have been easier for me to believe about aliens... at least they have some place in the rational universe as I understand it. Not that I really believe aliens have come to the Earth, you know, but... just waving your hand and casting spells... that's pure wish fulfillment." She looked deeply into my face. "I... I'd say that you sounded like you were being delusional, except that that doesn't explain what happened to me."

"No, it doesn't," I said. "Well, the fairy tales are occasionally inspired by real events, but they don't get Wizardry or our Errantry right in a number of ways. Wizardry isn't like magic in a lot of the books... there's nothing truly supernatural about it, though there's an awful lot that's surprising to someone who only understands the laws of physics as they've generally been accepted here on Earth."

I was expecting another hot objection by around this point, which was why I stopped, but Liz had surprised me. "Okay, so... so you use laws of nature that aren't understood by normal scientists?? I.. I guess I can accept that for the moment, with a reservation. Just what kind of laws, specifically, did you use to help me?"

"Umm... it's a bit complicated to describe to anyone who hasn't completed the prep reading," I muttered embarrassed, and Liz inclined her head sympathetically, with a bit of a nod that said 'try, anyway,' "Well... there are conservation laws... which are something that you'd expect in the natural universe, right? By... by a kind of 'conservation of pain', I couldn't just take your pain away, or work on your flesh, because that would have led to a net imbalance in pain. But I could take your pain onto myself, because I was better able to deal with it than you were right then." Liz's eyes widened.

"And, for the wound itself... the healing spell works a bit like a lever... to heal the damage to you, I had to inflict a small amount of damage to myself, blood for blood... and there was a magnified opposite reaction to you."

"Umm... okay, I guess," Liz muttered. "It... it still seems like a lot to swallow, but I don't really want to hear any more about that right now." She sighed. "So... so why you?"

"Why... why me what? Why did I help you? Umm... because I was probably the only one there in the diner who could..."

"No, why COULD you?" Liz said. "Why... why do you have these Wizardly powers?? Were... were you born with them for having been born under a particular star? Were you taught the Craft by an old Mage starting when you were six? Did you learn it all yourself from dusty books?" She sighed. "I... I'm sorry if any of this is cliche or offensive - I just, I'm not sure what are the right questions to ask of a teenage wizard."

I smiled. "Umm, some of those are pretty corny yeah, but I won't take offense. Umm... it's a bit complicated, but... but a lot of it comes down to the Manual." I looked around for my backpack, realized that I hadn't taken it out of the Jeep, and held out my hands, whispering a few words in the Speech under my breath. A few seconds later, the manual had flown into my grasp from the direction of the car. Liz's eyes widened. "There aren't a lot of other books... a few really special ones, occasionally a forgotten journal by some wizard that wasn't already integrated into the manual network pops up, and there arespecial references that the ranking Seniors use, but this book is more than enough for my everyday needs."

"It is how come I'm a wizard. There... there are powers in the universe, beings who are... are kind of closer to the true inner nature of things that we are yet, and part of their job is to keep things working as well as they possibly can. To do this, they recruit and guide the Wizards, on over a hundred billion different planets. For me, like for most candidates, the manual was the recruitment tool. It... it showed up in a gift-wrapped parcel special-delivered from my Aunt in Santa Fe. I don't think that she knew what it really was... to a lot of people who don't know about Wizardry, the manuals disguise themselves. My whole family thought it was just a fantasy novel, suitable for a thirteen-year old boy, adventures taking place in an unlikely and forbidding land. But once I started getting into it... I found that it was telling me a lot about this world, as well as the nearby stars of this galaxy. And that if I took the oath, I would start to learn wizardry." He sighed. "Took me a few days to go ahead and do it - that oath is a very heavy promise."

"All right," Liz said. "So you learned all that you know out of that one book?"

I chuckled. "Yeah, but don't be fooled. Umm...." I opened the book at a fairly random page and showed it to her. Liz frowned slightly at the Speech script on the pages - she wouldn't be able to read that herself. "Book - give me an English translation for: basic healing spell with serious blood loss." The book paused for a moment, (translation of technical material isn't easy, even for the book,) and then began listing prerequisite exercises, warnings, and instructions in sparse English paragraphs. (Speech tends to be more compact than English, since there are denser notations to replace new paragraphs, bullet lists, and so on. A bit harder on the eyes, but it helps to reduce the number of pages you might have to flip to get the full details on a tricky spell.)

"Okay, I admit that that's impressive," Liz said. "And it can do the same sort of thing for you, to give you more information than... than a static nonmagical book could?"

"Um, yeah." I'd meant to explain that myself, but got lost in thought again. Dammit.

"Okay, well... I have a lot of other questions, but... but maybe they can wait for another time," Liz said, pushing the book back to me. "I... I think I understand the basics now, and no, I won't blab about what you've done... you did want me to keep pretty quiet about it, yeah?"

"Umm... yes," I said. "Normally we don't have to let the people we help know about our powers. Not a huge secret, but it's just kind of easier and safer to operate incognito."

"We?" One of Liz's eyebrows went up. "Just how many other wizards do you... umm, do you know, Max? It's not a solitary thing, just you and your book?'

"Umm... no," I said. "It'd be a little hard to count off the spur of the moment - like if I asked you how many different people were in all your classes at school." Pause. "Probably not quite that many, though."

"Hmm." Liz considered that. "Okay. Umm... Maria - I think that she suspects something weird happened. I - I don't know if I even want to tell her, but..."

"Yeah, I understand," I said. "Well, go ahead and explain if you think it's best, but do swear her to secrecy if you do, okay?" Liz nodded. "Or if you want to arrange a meeting where I can do the explaining..."

"I'll let you know," Liz insisted, starting to climb back up. I mirrored her movements, not sure exactly why. "Well... um - I think I can walk home from here."

Suddenly I didn't want Liz to leave just yet - and not because of anything more I felt I had to explain about my art or my errantry. I... I wanted to kiss her, or to have her kiss me. I - maybe I could ask her. Yeah, great. Just how does that go? Umm... should I - could I suggest it as a thank you? No, that's weird, and kind of creepy. In fact, no matter how I made the move, it... suddenly I realized that I even wanted MORE than a kiss. If that was it, I could make my move - maybe it'd work and maybe she'd reject me. But... but even if I got that kiss, it wouldn't lead anywhere. "Umm... are you sure you want to walk? I... I wouldn't mind giving you a ride. Or... or we could just hang here a bit longer. It's a great place to be."

"Yeah, umm, yeah it is," Liz replied. "But... but I really have some english stuff that I need to tackle, and you probably have some spells to read up or potions to... do wizards do anything with potions for real??"

"Umm..." I blinked in surprise at the question. "Not the way it's generally thought of. Particular chemical or biochemical mixtures can occasionally be useful for specific tasks, but..."

"Right," Liz said. "Got it. Okay, um... well, I guess I wouldn't say no to a ride, though." I smiled, but there was a bit of an awkwardness between us as we walked back to the Jeep. Liz peered into the back and noticed that my backpack was hanging open. "Was... was that from how you, umm, you got the book to fly..."

"Yeah," I replied. "Laid a small contingency wizardry on the backpack, so that if I ever call my manual to me and it's inside, the backpack will open by itself. Never really thought it'd be necessary to make it close itself afterwards." Hmmm... I was musing over the possibilities of that, and whether it'd just be a waste of energy that could be better put to other things, as we drove back towards the center of town, where the Crashdown cafe, the restaurant that Liz's parents own, where Liz and Maria work as waitresses, stands on the west side of Main street, just a few lots up from Second avenue, which is the crossing of Roswell's two biggest roads. Across the street and a few more spaces up, is the UFO center... where I work, but not too often, because Brody Davis, the owner, is mad at me and doesn't give me more hours than he can help. (I've had to bail on work a few times when Errantry came up, without having good enough alibis. I'm not too worried about that though. Money isn't particularly tight, and not working much at the museum means more time for wizardry.)

"Umm, thanks," Liz said as I pulled into the Crashdown's parking lot. "Not... not just for the ride, I mean..."

"Well, that's not really necessary," I said quickly. "Ehh, think of me like a lifeguard or a firefighter or something like that. Saving a life, when there's an opportunity to, is part of the job description." I couldn't make up my mind whether that sounded cool or lame - and how much I should care. "I - I just hope that this isn't going to make things weird between us."

Liz snickered. I looked up, wondering if it was a happy laugh or something crueler. Looking into Liz's face, I wasn't quite sure... or maybe it was kind of in between, though less on the cruel side than... than something else, which was good I guess. "Max, you're a teenage wizard. I would think that 'weird' just kind of comes with the territory - unavoidable."

I laughed too. "Well, you've kind of got a point there. I... I guess I meant more 'uncomfortable' weird than 'bizarre' weird. Some fun strangeness I wouldn't mind too much."

"Well, I'm not going to avoid you and give you the cold shoulder in lab, if that's the sort of thing you're talking about. Aside from that... well, we didn't really know each other outside of classes, before this, did we?"

"No, you're right, we didn't." Took deep breath. "But... but I'd like to change that now. Can I call you sometime?"

Liz blinked. "Umm... okay, I wasn't expecting *that.*" My face started to fall. "But yeah, that'd be good I think. I'm listed." She then cocked her head slightly. "Do wizard guys ACTUALLY call??"

I had to smile a half-grin at that. "If I tell you I'm going to call, I'll call." Bad thing for a wizard to stop living up to promises and all that, even if he wasn't using the speech.

"And are you telling me you're going to call?" she pressed.

I'm not sure quite why, but I wasn't sure about committing myself to that. "We'll talk soon." Liz's face fell slightly, but she nodded acceptance of that, and with a mouthed and not quite voiced 'Bye', she jumped out of the car and ran inside the back of the cafe. I thought about what had happened, shook my head, and headed off for home once again. It quickly became clear that I could hardly keep myself from smiling.

When I got home, my mom was trying to come to grips with a meatloaf recipe in the kitchen, and upstairs in the den... "Oh, hi Michael. Hi Isabel." Looked around. "No Alex today??"

"He's got band practice," Isabel replied. "We'll probably talk on the phone later tonight."

"Okay." I shrugged and took a seat just inside the door. "So what's up?"

"I've kinduv got a contract," Michael said. "Was just asking Izzy for her opinion - would love to hear your thoughts too."

"Ooh," I said, smiling with interest. Contract is another of those buzzwords that have a slightly different meaning in our fields, I guess... most often it just means a specific request for help... like when Maowah came to me earlier that afternoon. (Hmm... I should make a point of checking to see that he was okay, if I could figure out any good way to find the cat. And I hadn't worked up the nerve to examine Liz's liver today when I had the chance. Dammit.) "So who's the contractor, and for what?"

"Umm... well, it's nothing particular," Michael said. "Just a freshman kid who's asking me for help about a bully problem."

That stumped me for a moment. "Umm, does he know that you're..."

"No - or at least, he didn't say anything to give away that he does," Michael replied before I could even finish the obvious question. "Does that matter? It's still a call for help."

"Of course, of course," I said quickly. "Didn't mean to imply anything. So... what do we think??"

"It's pretty tricky," Isabel volunteered. "As... as much as I hate the fact that bullying goes on, it... it's sometimes something that the bullyee needs to figure out a solution to on their own. As a part of growing up."

"Like ordeal," I muttered. "Alright... so we need to help and guide the... the client into overcoming the situation on their own, instead of just facing down the bully or bullies ourselves."

"Yeah," Michael said, and sighed. "But I'm not sure just what I'm supposed to be teaching the grasshopper." I laughed slightly.

We talked about the details a bit, and then Michael and I settled down to do some math homework in my room, while Isabel went onto her computer to do something or other. Michael stayed around and ate dinner with us - Mom and Dad are used to that kind of thing, and Mom says sometimes that she thinks of him as her third child, which always embarrasses Michael... well, a bunch of stuff about Hank and his family embarrasses Michael, though it usually takes someone who knows him really well to notice.

That night and the next day at school were pretty boring. Michael pointed out the freshman with the bully problem, though I didn't actually meet him and talk with him, (I did find out that his name was Andy,) and in history class we were given the biography profile assignment again. I went through this last year - the teacher assigns partners and hands out a list of twenty questions, and you have to 'interview' the other person and prepare a report of the answers. Last time, I had Kyle Valenti, the sheriff's son, and he had just found out that I was a wizard then, so he was using the questions to pry into that sort of thing, and I had to argue a long time to convince him that it wouldn't be a good idea to hand anything in that would give it away... mostly because the teacher would probably just think that we weren't treating the subject seriously if it listed that I was afraid of the Kindler of wildfires, or that the best thing that ever happened was finding out that Isabel and Michael had passed their ordeal and would be wizards along with me. Sigh. Kyle has issues with all three of us, mostly having to do with his dad, but I'll explain more about that later, especially because he isn't even in our history class this time around.

But I got paired up with Alex, which in some ways was even worse. I didn't want to lie, but I couldn't say anything that would make him really suspicious, for Isabel's sake as much as anything. If Alex is going to find out about wizardry, it kind of has to be from her, or he's going to blame her for keeping this huge part of her life a secret from him. (Maybe he would anyway, but it seems to me like that's probably her best chance.) Also, I noticed that Isabel had been paired up with Maria, and Liz with Michael. (At least Michael was actually in class this time, and Liz wouldn't need to go off chasing him like Arlene Lindonn did last year.)

"Well, hey," Alex said when I dropped into the seat next to him, as all around the room other people were switching to connect with their new teammates. "So, umm... not much time to get started on this right now. How about meeting in the caf at lunch? I think we both have it fourth period."

"Umm, yeah, but the caf's always too noisy to get work done," I pointed out, and Alex nodded in acceptance of the point. "Library at quarter to twelve?" That would give us each about twenty minutes to scarf down some food, and maybe hit the bathroom or go to lockers, and leave over half an hour for working.

"Alright. Those round tables to the left of the way in?"

I thought. "No, the little square ones in the back right." Alex paused a moment and nodded. We probably wouldn't be able to get the whole thing done at lunch, even allowing for the fact that things certainly wouldn't drag out as long as Kyle had made them, but we'd be able to get a lot done. After history, I had gym... (running football receiver patterns - oh joy oh joy,) and then I had to shower and get changed before grabbing a very quick lunch. Working through the questions with Alex wasn't too bad, though I did feel a little guilty about not being completely honest... not so much lying, as cutting a huge part of my life silently out of consideration before answering.

Oh well. The better part was finding out more about him - that his favorite relative was his Aunt Louise, (actually his cousin once removed,) who lived out in California, and that his favorite movie ever was the Princess bride, and all of that other stuff. Then more classes in the afternoon of the day, and as I was sitting in study hall and had just about gotten through as much of Act 2 of King Lear as I could, I pulled open my manual and started idly riffling through it's pages. Checked Michael's entry, and then headed from G over to E and looked at Isabel's... then mine - and got a huge shock.

-----------

"Hey, Liz," I said, slipping into the booth she was in at the Crashdown. "I... I'm glad that I found you. Tried to, umm, to before you left the school area, but..."

"Max, what's going on?" she said in surprise. "Michael's... um, Michael's in the bathroom. We have to get this stupid thing done before I go on shift, because..."

"Forget the assignment," I whispered. "This is serious. I... I know this sounds strange, but I believe that your life could still be in danger!"

"Why??"

"Umm... that's kind of a long story.... hey Michael." I moved over slightly, allowing Michael to sit on this side of the booth, with his little piece of note paper and his yellow-painted pencil in front of him.

"What's up, man?"

"I... I'm on active, and I think it... it has to do with Liz." I muttered, and took a deep breath. "With what happened the other day."

"On... on active?" Liz said, not quite as quietly, and Michael made a gesture for her to keep it down with his hand. "What's going..." For a long moment, she was beyond words, and I didn't speak either, somehow hypnotized by the look on her face. Michael was uncharacteristically silent too, for what reasons I couldn't guess as easily. "Max, is... is he a wizard too?" This came out in a low hiss.

"Hey, what?" Michael whispered back. "Maxwell, you didn't tell her about us?" He sounded almost offended that I hadn't spilled his part of the big secret.

"Um, things got confused," I said lamely, "and we didn't get around to that part. Yeah, Liz, Michael's a wizard too, and so is my sister. We work together a lot." I sighed.

"Okay, so you're on active," Michael replied.

"Umm... for those of us who are still clueless," Liz replied, "what exactly does that mean??"

"Let's... let's go outside," I suggested, and waited while Liz packed up her books into her bag, and Michael folded up his paper, putting it, and the pencil, into his pocket. "One of the things in the manual I showed you yesterday," I explained to Liz, "is a directory of wizards. Generally just for a few counties in the Roswell area, though it can be expanded, like most manual functions, to show more distant districts. It shows contact information for all living wizards, power ratings... and status information, sometimes with more or less detail. Suddenly looking in the directory and finding that you're on active is sometimes the first notice that you have of a mission... kind of the equivalent of, umm, of looking up and seeing the Bat-signal."

"Except that you can't just go over to see Commissioner Gordon and get the full scoop on what's prompted the signal," Michael added. "Were there any further explanation at all, Max??"

"See for yourself," I said, handing my manual over to him - more to get Liz familiar with it, than because I couldn't afford to tell him myself. Michael quickly scanned through the listing on the page that I'd held open and grunted softly.

"Wait a second," Liz said, before Michael could speak further. "Don't... don't you have your own manual at your beck and call, Michael, if you're a wizard too?"

"Umm, well yeah," he admitted. "It's around. But it was easier to use Max's, since he had it out already."

"And... and what does it say?" she prompted.

"Protective assignment, duration uncertain," he muttered. "Translating into english as best I can. And from this, Max, you've deduced that Liz is the person that you're supposed to protect? Maybe that the shooting was more than it seemed to be."

"That's about the only thing I can think of that made sense," I agreed. "And... well, I'm not sure where to go from here."

Michael smiled slightly. "Well, Liz and I have stuff to do, and I've got your back. No-one will hurt her for the next few hours. So then, you can afford to go get a bit of *advice*."

"Advice??" Liz asked, looking between us again, confused. "From whom??"

I smiled, warming to another part of Liz's education about wizards. "There are particular wizards who have volunteered or been chosen for community duty as Advisories. Kinduv the first step in a loose hierarchy of authority, although an Advisory's authority is very slight on their own part... they can drop by sometimes and make suggestions, or wizards in their area will come to them to ask for help with their missions. Also they serve as intermediaries or speculators in wizardly horse-trading... bartering with energy, information, favors, or valuable items, and they help distribute notifications and messages from the higher-ups, when that isn't within the purview of the manuals themselves."

"Alright," Liz said, getting this much. "How many advisories are here in Roswell? What about anybody further up in the hierarchy??"

"We've got two full-time advisories, who mostly work separately instead of as a team, though they have to consult often," Michael told her. "The senior wizard for southeast New Mexico doesn't live in town, though he's not too far away."

"Yeah," I agreed. "We'll go see him if it looks like it's necessary, but one of the advisories is first. Frankly, I probably should have dropped in to see him before now, after healing you, Liz."

"Umm... why??"

"That I think we'll have to explain later, Liz," Michael said, rolling his eyes. "You're just full of questions, aren't you? Come on, let's go back into the diner. I don't think whoever it is will try to make a move on you in there again."

"Okay, I guess so." Liz shook her head. "I'm not sure I'm going to like having wizardly bodyguards, at least until someone can convince me that there's a real need for it." But she let Michael lead her back inside the Crashdown. I sat down on a bench, opened my manual back up, and went to the messaging functions. Nothing terribly interesting showed up under recent messages, (of course I'd have known if there was something new by the way the book 'felt' - there's a kind of a soft buzzing effect to let you know when you've got mail, unless you choose some other option.)

Started a new message. 'From ME to JV - require an advising. Immediately if not sooner. Where and when??' I sent off the message through the manual network and waited. The advisory that I wanted would probably have a protocol in place for getting notified even if he couldn't physically check his manual - certainly it never seemed to take too long to get a reply.

Sure enough, the response appeared further down the page about a minute and a half later. 'Max, you're killing me here. I'm at work, and can't just take off to deal with wizardry. JV.' That was it for the message, but I didn't reply immediately or get up. And a few minutes later, another message came in. 'Alright, be at Chuck's in ten minutes. I can get away for a quarter-hour, have some dinner while we talk.' I smiled and headed into the van. Expected this - maybe I should have been driving towards Chuck's coffeehouse before I even got the reply. Hmm.

Decided to use a small mental wizardry before I went inside the building - nothing strong, that would keep people from recognizing me, if they really paid any attention, but on first glance, (and any glances, as long as they didn't focus intently enough to break through the spell,) I'd seem more mature and unfamiliar. Got a cappuccino and a tea biscuit with honey, and a few minutes later James Valenti, the sheriff, and Kyle's dad, slid in across from me. "Nice workmanship. Glad to see that you're not focusing too intently on the medical arts. The powers have a bit more in mind for you."

"Thanks Mister V." I sighed. It was never easy for me to know how to talk to Valenti. He was normally pretty friendly when acting as an advisory, but sometimes got stiffly formal when he thought someone crossed the line into relatively mild lack of respect. (Michael was good at pulling that sort of thing.) "Umm... you probably went to the Crashdown cafe, after the... argument broke out, day before yesterday."

"Yeah, I got called in," the sheriff agreed. "Found the bullet, somehow *underneath* where Liz had fallen." He sighed. "Sloppy job covering your tracks, but at least she seemed to be alright."

"Yes," I agreed. "Thanks for taking care of it. I... I was just panicking a little, and forgot about that entirely until we'd left."

"Okay," Jim said. "Water under the bridge. Does this have anything to do with what you want to talk about now?"

"Umm, yeah." Okay, just take a deep breath. "I'm on active protection duty in the directory, and... and I think it's because I have to make sure Liz is safe... that some other kind of threat may develop since she wasn't killed from that shooting."

"Hmm. Keep quiet about that a moment." I was confused at first, but Valenti called the waiter over and ordered a black coffee regular and a sandwich. "Well, that's a bit of a jump, but sometimes you need to make an intuitive leap when the manual doesn't give you information," he said once the guy had left our table again. "Is there anything else that it could be about in your recent practice, or that of any of your friends??"

"Hmm." I thought about that. "I healed a cat yesterday, but I don't really think he's the one I'm supposed to bodyguard, or this boy who's having bully problems at school. Isabel's been talking to some trees, but again... I don't really see how it relates. I'll keep alert for any signs that I need to re-interpret the objective, but... but Liz is my best lead at the moment."

"Hmm..." Jim considered that, and I wondered if he'd call my bias into question... sure, there was a part of me that WANTED the mission to be about Liz, just because it'd mean spending time with her, but... but I really didn't think I was letting that affect my perception of the situation. "Well, it might fit. Katy and I... we've been keeping track of... well, of signs. That some form of the darkness is making movements, and introducing a group of operatives here into Roswell." He sighed. "If... if the Eldest power does want Liz Parker dead, however distantly or remotely it has implemented the attempt on her life -- and we'd all better hope that it's remote, because I'm not sure that we'll be able to protect her otherwise... well, I just wonder what it is that HE might want Liz to *not* do." Valenti's coffee and sandwich arrived just about then, which gave me some time to mentally digest what he'd said. "By the way, why did you choose to inflict this stuff on me, and not on my fellow advisory??"

"Well, I did want to make sure that the bullet wouldn't cause any trouble," I told him. Kathleen Topolsky, the guidance counselor at the high school, had been the other Advisory in Roswell for about a year and a half. "So... so, you think that... that Liz might grow up to be someone important enough to humanity, that the power who invented death wants to make sure she dies young and won't live out that life??"

"That... that's one of a few different possibilities," Valenti said softly. "Another possibility is that she might be scheduled to become a wizard herself soon - though she must be at least sixteen, and that would be pretty late to take the Oath, I admit." Valenti shrugged. "Might even be that she's an Avatar of the powers herself, or will become one - somebody who an Immortal demigod could use to take care of its business here on our world. But figuring out WHY is not really your job at the moment: I just wanted to go over the possibilities as a way of underscoring how important this mission could be. Regardless of whether it's about Liz or anybody else. Wizards are rarely assigned 'bodyguard duty', so if that's what your listing says, it's important."

"Yeah, yeah, I understand," I said, my mind spinning a bit with the possibilities. "Okay... so any idea what kind of attacks I need to be prepared to protect her from??"

"Well, let's see." Valenti set up a fancy-looking notebook PC on the table, away from what was left of his sandwich, and I knew that he was booting up manual functions on it. "I mentioned that the darkness had been moving a small force into Roswell, right?" I nodded. "We're still not sure of the exact nature of it... looks like a small unit of powerful minions... not Perytons or phantoms, but of roughly equivalent power to either of those." I sucked in my breath. Perytons were nasty, bad news - werewolf like, creatures born out of pure hate that reached from beyond their former graves. Even a powerful wizard could usually not hope to prevail against more than two Perytons. Phantoms, also, were powerful, though I wasn't so sure about their powers and strength offhand. "Also a human leader, we think, who's been granted special powers by the darkness... not a dark wizard, thank the powers, or even a fallen wizard. But his, or her, powers will probably be strong enough that you couldn't directly counter them with your wizardry, though they won't have your versatility, or the kind of information that you've got in your manual."

"Wow." I sucked in a long breath. "If... if a team like that really is trying to kill Liz - how can we stop them for long? I've got the rest of the gang to help - Isabel and Michael, but still..."

"I... I don't know the answer to that one," Valenti said, sighing softly. "If I did... then probably it would've been my mission." I laughed sarcastically, and the sheriff shot me a warning look. "I do think that it makes some sense to take this problem one step up the ladder."

"Yeah, I was wondering about talking to the Senior," I said. "But probably nobody will be able to go out to the reservation until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. It's too late to be heading out there now, I think. And... and I've got homework to do, dammit."

"Right." Valenti sighed. "Well... I'll tell him you're coming, and brief him on our consultation." Jim sighed. "Better be getting back to work myself." He started packing up the notebook computer and popped the last bite of sandwich into his mouth.

"By the way, I like the new machine," I said with a smile.

"Yeah, it works great." I started thinking about that as I drove back towards the cafe. A few months ago, I'd tried to get a computer-driven manual of my own, but apparently there was a limited supply available for this district, and I hadn't qualified for anything other than my original book. Hmm... maybe if this mission was really so important...

Just then my cell phone rang, and I picked it up. "Hello??"

"Umm, yeah, it's Alex. Not... not wanting to be a pest, but we did say that we were going to meet up and do the rest of that profile this evening, and... then I didn't hear anything from you before you left school, or anything..."

Oh, boy. Somehow I didn't feel like I had the patience for this stuff, now that my new mission had popped up, but... well, what else could I do? "Umm, yeah, where are you now, anyway??"

"At my place, near College and North Union."

Hmm. "D'you know the Crashdown Cafe?"

"Oh, yeah, a few of my old friends used to work there... probably still do."

Uh-huh. Come to think of it, I think I remember Alex, Liz, and Maria being thick as thieves before we got to high school, though I don't think that they're still tight anymore. "Wanna grab a few orbit burgers and work through the last seven questions or so over dinner?"

"Wouldn't suck I guess. Umm, I'll ask my Dad if I can borrow..."

"I think I can swing by and pick you up," I told him, and that was what ended up happening. I asked him on the way over if Liz and Maria were the friends he had been talking about, and Alex confirmed my guesses. Apparently, in the summer before ninth grade, he and Maria had had a huge fight and falling out over some band that Alex was putting together and Maria wanted to join. Liz had tried to stay friends with them both, but as things got worse and her hanging out with both of them separately had started causing problems with each friendship separately, Liz had chosen to stick with Maria, who she'd known for longer.

"So... would it be weird for you to be around them at this point?" I asked a bit nervously.

"Ehh, I dunno." Alex sighed. "We'll see how it goes through."

When we went inside, he seemed very determined to avoid both of his old friends though, even choosing not to go over and say hello to Isabel because she was sitting with Maria - both of them going through their own profiles too. Liz was running around with a tray and an order pad, so I went over to Michael's booth for a moment and asked him for an update. They'd only gotten through about half of their profiles before Liz had to go on shift apparently, and Liz had been full of more and more questions about what it was like being a wizard. Also, Michael had told Isabel a bit about the situation, but there hadn't been time for many details before Maria had appeared. This promised to get very confusing and stay very complicated.

As long as I was focusing on Alex, and he was ignoring Liz and Maria, though, things didn't get out of hand for me too quickly, though. I was able to keep a bit of an eye on Liz and reassure myself that she seemed to be doing okay. Then Maria suited up for waitress duty and I went over to tell Isabel about the dirt... and Alex was right behind me, eager to get a bit of affection from his honey... HELP! Finally Alex went off to talk to some saxophone player he was trying to recruit for his latest musical group, and I rushed through the basics for Isabel, as Michael came over to join the confab.

"Whatever's going on, I think that the danger to Liz will be greatest at night," I said. "And these guys might want to move quickly if they've noticed that I'm on the case, protecting her... making a move before we've figured out what our best defensive strategy." Deep breath. "I... I think that the best way would be if she and I were under the same roof until sunrise - but I can't possibly arrange that for myself." I focused on Isabel. "Is there ANY way that you can sell Mom on the idea that Liz is a new friend and you... I dunno, want to have her over for a sleepover?"

"What, like we're twelve?" Isabel shot back, and I winced. "Sorry, but - even if that didn't seem weird to her, or to Liz's mom... I don't think that Mom would go for it on a school night. If this were the weekend..."

"On the weekend, we'll have some other opportunities anyway," Michael put in. "Sorry, don't think you'll be able to have Liz in the next room... but we can probably use wizardries to get the next best thing - from her point of view. Use a couple of alarm or detector spells to warn you in case of any kind of trouble - and keep a transit circle on your bedroom floor tonight, set to send you directly into her bedroom." He chuckled slyly. "And *don't* use it unless one of the alarms actually goes off. No matter how great the temptation."

"Whaat?" Isabel said, and then she made the mental connection. "Oh, right. Poor Max - having to bodyguard the girl that he's got a crush on." And she snickered just slightly. I don't know why I put up with this kind of abuse from my family and friends - except that they're usually handy in getting me out of tight scrapes.

"Who's got a crush on who??" Alex asked as he slipped in beside Isabel. Whoops - hadn't realized that he was on his way back. Had he heard anything about the bodyguarding?

"Michael's got a thing for Maria," I blurted out. Not really sure why that came out - though I do think that it's true. Michael twisted his head around and shot me a dagger-look.

"Hmm... great," Alex sighed. "I guess she's pretty cute and all - but not my type. Just don't ask me to play Cyrano for you, Guerin." He sighed. "How's the profile going honey??"

"Umm... Maria's a lot better at talking than listening," Isabel explained. "I've got all of my answers, and I didn't even need to ask more than half the questions. But I think it'd be mean to slip out while she still has more than eight spaces to fill in on me."

"Well, she's on shift, right, so she probably won't be able to do much more homework while she's on the job," Alex pointed out. "We can go to... umm, probably not an evening show at the movies. Head back to your place and watch a bit of TV?"

"Umm... yeah, that sounds great," Isabel replied. "I'll just try and find out when she'll be done before I go." So Alex got up to let her out of the booth. "What about you guys?"

"I've got more answers to get myself, and I think that Liz is done in about three-quarters of an hour," Michael explained. "And I think Max is going to hang around to keep me company."

"Cool." And with that, Alex hurried off out to the parking lot, noticing that Isabel had left as well.

----------

I stared at the transit circle sitting exposed on my bedroom floor.

I wasn't terribly worried that my dad would want to come in and would see it or anything. I normally don't do wizardry out in plain sight like this, as a matter of discretion, but neither of our parents do bed checks or anything corny like that. In fact, it might be a very interesting scene if he DID see that I had a transit circle on my floor, and just possibly might ask me where it was set to send. There have been a few weird suggestions that the other wizards in the Roswell area are trying to prevent me and my friends from knowing about a few members of the caucus, and between that and a few other clues, I'm starting to wonder if Mom or Dad, or both, are wizards and for some reason we're not supposed to know about them... or maybe they about us. I haven't quite mustered enough nerve to simply blurt things out and ask them, but it's a very weird situation. Isabel goes back and forth between telling me that I'm crazy for thinking so and wondering herself, I think.

Once Liz was done her shift, Michael and I accompanied her up to the apartment that her parents keep above the cafe, and Michael peppered her with questions from the history profile while I tried to bring her up to speed on what I've learned from 'the advisory' - (I didn't want to blow Valenti's cover just yet, so I had to be very careful not to mention his name to her,) and to explain the plan for tonight. Eventually got four alarms set up... one over the window that led out from her bedroom to the ledge outside, where there was a fire ladder leading down to the parking lot. Another on the door to her bedroom, though I couldn't act on that one alone, since Liz's parents might come in to check on her, or Liz might have to go out to use the bathroom, grab a drink of juice in the kitchen, etcetera. I *would* be able to tell if it was a supernatural creature passing through the door, and that would be a grounds for immediate transit. Third was an alarm strip on the wall near her bed, which she agreed to only press if the situation was desperate, and last was a monitor of Liz's own emotional state that would trigger for a fear reaction, any indication that she'd been knocked unconscious through force, was breathing fumes as she slept, etcetera.

But Michael's words seemed to be taunting me in my head, about using the transit circle without any legitimate grounds. That would be a huge invasion of Liz's privacy of course, and could probably get both of us into even more trouble, but... but realizing that that little circle of words and magical inscriptions on the floor represented a secret doorway into Liz Parker's bedroom, made it a powerful kind of temptation. I tried to put it out of my mind and go back to sleep.

I slept restlessly, haunted by dreams of dark creatures that I'd read of in the manual, and of hauntingly deep brown eyes that seemed to reach out and take hold of my soul. Suddenly, the book woke me up, calling out in three different sirens at once. I grabbed it and rushed into the circle, speaking a single word - and with a soft bang and pop, I felt myself disappear from my own room, transfer across town, and emerge in another dark chamber. There was a stiff wind blowing - the window had been broken in, and - and a dark shape was leaning over the small bed, with another, slightly paler figure scrambling, trying again and again to trigger the alarm strip on the wall, not realizing that help had already arrived.

Okay, so what could I actually DO to help, now that I'd arrived? First thing, I cast the quickest protection shield I knew around myself, since I couldn't afford to waste much time in this situation. Then... what kind of offence made sense? Something with literally a lot of firepower didn't seem to be called for, because I didn't want to cause damage to Liz's room, or worst-came-to-worst, the whole building. So I tried something a little risky - I concentrated on what I wanted, opened up the manual, and hoped that it would have time to find and index on my needs by the time I looked. The print on the page glowed, and I recognized the pattern of a terse but potent bone breaker. Cool. I read it out loud, plucking out a hair from the back of my head at the appropriate time, since that was a requirement of the spell. Just as Liz started to really scream instead of just yelping, I set the spell loose and aimed it at her attacker.

There was a very faint cracking sound, and Liz managed to scramble away from whatever it was, but it didn't look like all of its bones were broken, which is what that spell SHOULD have done. I watched - the monster looked like it was limping slightly on one leg, but I figured that the most I'd gotten was one compound fracture. That wasn't good. Oh, and as Liz scrambled past a patch of streetlight coming in through the broken window, I realized that she was bleeding.

That was when the second monster jumped me. It must have been hiding next to the door, waiting to ambush Liz's parents if they came in to check on all the noise that was being made in here, and me appearing out of nowhere probably caught it off guard. But when I'd cast the spell, it knew exactly where I was, even in the dark, dammit. I tumbled ass over shoulders, fetching up against the foot of Liz's bed, and the thing was all over me, strong arms holding one of mine and one of my shoulders, and fangs glinting in the dim light. That was the cue of what I was up against.

A vampire. A real, honest-to-powers vampire, and if I didn't think of something very smart in the next few seconds, it was freaking gonna kill me. What... what was true about vampires, and what was just made-up Hollywood myths? I tried to think. Pretty obviously, the bit about not coming in unless they were invited was fake, since I don't think Liz or her family would have invited these ones in through the window. Did a stake in the heart do anything useful? Had anything wooden been broken during the scuffle so far?

When it leaned in to bite me, I wasn't thinking clearly, I just tried to block it with the only heavy thing that I was carrying, But as I shoved the manual in the vamp's face, it seemed to blaze up with a fire that wasn't hot to my fingers, but blazed painfully against the undead's flesh. Of course... tools of the light would burn a vampire, and the manual qualified. If vampires were the main threat that was facing Liz, then Isabel, Michael, and I should fall back on the old standbys like noon-forged steel and moonlit rowan wands. I kept shoving the manual at the vampire even as it tried to scramble away, wanting to freak it out as badly as possible before I turned away. It shoved back, sending me sprawling even as he shrieked against the pain, and hurried out the broken window. Well, that kinduv worked.

I turned around, and heard a cold, cruel voice. "Just stop right there, Wizard. You... you make one move, or start casting a spell, and she will be dead in an instant."

Uh-oh. I didn't doubt that the vampire could make good on its threat... he had a firm hold on Liz's head, and with the strength of the supernatural, he could probably crack it off her neck in just about a second. I didn't have the supplies to heal something like that before death became irreversible... before everything that was unique about Liz was lost to the world of Time, preserved only in the heart of things. But... but why wouldn't the vampire kill her right now? That was why he had been sent here.

Because he wanted to find some way to accomplish his mission and be a bit surer of surviving and escaping. He didn't realize that I wasn't well prepared for this fight, that I probably couldn't keep him from getting away no matter how hard I tried. But I couldn't let him realize that. I had to think of some kind of a plan.

I couldn't think of anything. All that I could see was Liz's eyes glinting out of the shadows, focused straight at mine.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Chapter 3

I tried to think and to play it cool. Liz's life was hanging in the balance... maybe mine too. I couldn't think of any wizardry that would let me get the best of this vampire right away. "Okay, I'm... I'm not moving, I'm not casting a spell," I said. "What... what happens next."

"Well, next I..." the vampire started, and then seemed to pause, thinking hard itself. He wasn't stupid, but thinking isn't generally in a vampire's strongest suit. The same standoff applied to him, at least as far as he could tell - especially since he'd just seen me use my manual as a weapon and send his friend running. (Of course, I couldn't use that trick again on an opponent who was ready for it, but he probably thought I had other effective tricks up my sleeve, which I didn't.) If he killed Liz and faced me, he might get killed, (at least I had to hope that he thought so,) but if he let her go and left, his master would probably try to strike him down for failing in his mission. Rock and a hard place.

Just at that moment, Liz seemed to seize the opportunity to secure her own freedom. I wasn't sure at the time exactly what she did, but I think she started by throwing her upper body back into him, and at the same time, she hooked one foot around his lower calf and pulled as hard as she could. It wasn't a devastating attack or anything, but it certainly took him by surprise, and kept him from following up on his threat about killing her instantly for a few seconds. In that time, I suddenly realized, I'd have to follow up, to do something that would scare him enough to convince him to take his chances on the run, even if it had to be a bluff. I blurted out six words in the speech and a little vocalized sigh on the end, and a spot of light appeared in the room close to Liz and vampy, growing brighter as it floated near, shining with a bright yellowish radiance that every vampire had to recognize... and fear.

It worked - at least partly. Snarling away from Liz and the midnight sun wizardry, the vampire flung himself towards me, trying to break my concentration or my neck, so that he could finish Liz off in peace. At the last second I remembered to bring my manual up and brandish that in his face. The flames that wouldn't burn living skin started to lick around the edges of it.

That was way too much - this vampire followed the same course as the first, running out the window and not looking back. I took a deep breath... and couldn't let it out. "Liz, honey??" someone called from outside. "What on earth is the matter??"

Liz made a tiny little squeaking sound - she was still half stumbled against the bed, where the vampire had thrown her. Her eyes met mine, flashing slightly in the light of the artificial sun, and I realized for the first time that the vampire had managed to tear the front of her pajama shirt during the fracas. Keeping my eyes off of what was showing was hard, but with only a breath of a whisper she mouthed the words 'You have to GO!!' I thought about it for a second, killing the sun wizardry first thing. Of course Liz was right - her parents would be in the room almost immediately, and though I had a 'return to home' transit circle in my own shirt pocket, it would need to get the co-ordinates of this room placed within it before I could set it and use it. There wasn't time for that. (Of course, since I'd anticipated having to come to Liz's room if she set off the alarm, it would have been a good thing to prepare the return trip as well, but I hadn't anticipated needing to make a quick exit as well. Even wizards can't plan for everything.) But I was able to take and use another prepared wizardry from that pocket - 'the elven cloak' - a net of invisible light diversion magic that allows a person to be invisible and transparent to the light frequencies that human beings can see. Stepping into the corner of the room, I stayed perfectly still and waited.

"Oh, oh my god, dad," Liz said, rushing forward as her father came into the room, letting most of her feelings about the attack show naturally. "It... it was so horrible. These... these dark and scary guys, no, there was just one of them - he broke in through the window. I... I think he was going to... to... but he must have heard a sound from outside the room, and decided to... I, I'm so glad that you were here..." And she dissolved into tears of fear and relief.

I won't go into a lot of detail about the scene that followed, especially since I was an accidental intruder on a scene that all three Parkers thought was completely private. Liz's mother insisted on calling the sheriff right away, which was a good idea - Valenti might not come himself, but he probably had some good people working for him who'd know what was best to do and not to do in a situation like this. And once she'd called, Mister Parker insisted on microwaving some hot chocolate for his little girl and staying until she'd drunk at least a bit of it. I had the transit circle worked out by this point, but couldn't use it while either of her parents were in the room without startling them again - it tends to make a bit of a loud popping sound, because there's suddenly a space in the room with no air pressure. Sounds a little bit like a gun going off outside the house, sometimes. And, also, I kind of wanted to talk to Liz again before I went home.

It was twenty minutes or so, (very long time to be standing perfectly still,) before I got my chance. After a few hugs, her parents left, and Liz started to take off the bathrobe that her father had handed her, probably wanting to replace the torn top. "Umm, I'm still here," I said softly, and dropped the invisibility spell as Liz covered herself tightly up again, turning in my direction and blushing. "I... I couldn't leave quite yet, so I just went invisible. Sorry if... well, I didn't remember until a few minutes later that you wouldn't have realized I was still hanging around."

"Umm... that's okay, I guess," she said softly. "I... I suppose I owe you thanks for saving my life a second time, now."

"It... it's all part of the job," I replied with a smile. "I... I don't think that the vampires will try to come back again tonight, but I'm not sure. The... the alarm on the wall and the one in your mind should still be good, though the one over the windows is shot. If you need me, I'll be back here before you can say 'wizard'."

"I... I didn't really believe you until - until it was nearly too late," Liz admitted, turning her face down in a way that instantly hit me with the emotional force of a minivan collision - something about the way I could see just a bit of her eyes through dark lashes. "What... what were those guys?"

"Vampires, I think. Don't really know too many of the real facts about them, though I'm sure as... as anything going to find out as much as I can soon." Big sigh. "Servants of the evil powers. My... my wizardry doesn't seem to work at anything like full force against them."

"Oh." Liz took a moment to think about that. "So... so that sunsphere or whatever that you cast..."

"Probably wouldn't have hurt him even without an immunity to magic, actually. It's a cheap little trick... recreating the light of the sun, but without any of the metaphysical elements that are hostile to creatures of the night. But I hoped that it would be enough to make him panic...."

"And... and you just - you stepped into a circle of words, and you were here in a moment," Liz said. "Somehow... somehow that impresses me more than anything else you've shown me or told me about. How... how is that even possible under the laws of physics, anyway??" Her eyes were bright again, with wonder instead of panic this time.

"Umm... it's a bit hard to explain. Basically... even though matter is generally used to going from point A to point B by travelling through every point in between... there are ways to make it take short cuts. That way, technically, you can get past the speed of light, actually. When you're using a transit spell or other kinds of interdimensional gating, you're not travelling at the speed..."

"...speed of anything," Liz filled in. "Like 'a wrinkle in time.' I get it." She thought about it a moment. "So, with a transit spell like that... you could get us to the reservation to talk with this senior wizard of yours in the blink of an eye, right? Not taking the time to drive all the way up to Mesaliko. We... we could go right now."

"Umm... we could get there quick," I agreed slowly, "but... well, if your parents, or one of the Sheriff's deputies, come in here and you're nowhere around, they're gonna freak out." Liz's face curled into a disappointed look. "And if you're thinking of going there, spending hours talking to the Senior and then coming back at the same moment that we left... well, that's possible, but not without commissioning a timeslide and getting approval from the senior, which he's unlikely to grant just because you're a bit impatient."

Liz took a deep breath. "Alright. Then... then when can we go?" There was a pause. "I... I know that I didn't sound very eager about this last night, but EVERYTHING has changed now - you have to be able to see why. I... I want to understand what's going on - and no offense to you, I need to find some way that I can help to protect myself. This guy sounds like he might have the answers I need, and if he doesn't, I'm going to get him to cough up another name." She paused. "By the way, what's HIS name?"

I sighed slightly. "River dog." Liz's face quirked, and I smiled. "Yeah... it's a very traditional name among his people. Umm, as far as when we can go... I guess around the same time that you'd usually leave for school in the morning. River dog might send us back quick enough that we can make it in time for homeroom... or he may not. He sometimes has a different perspective on things like that from other adults."

"Alright, then... then meet me out in the parking lot, quarter to seven?" Liz said. Gulping slightly at the thought of how little sleep I was likely to get before then, I nodded, and opened my arms in a silent invitation. Tittering nervously, Liz gave me a brief hug, and then watched as I made the adjustments to my transit circle and popped back into my own dark bedroom. I went over to the bed, and was about to drop into it when I brushed someone else's leg.

"Hey!"

"It's me," Isabel said softly, and a second later she had reached out and turned my bedside lamp on, adjusting the shade so that almost no light got out. "I... I could feel you leave, and... and I just wanted to be here in case. If... if you called out to me in the speech, I'd have heard, and done something to help. You know that??"

"Yeah, yeah of course I know," I agreed. "That's what sisters are best at." Even in the dim light I could see her smile slightly. "Mom and dad still asleep??"

"They *were*, a minute ago. Not sure about after that bang... you really need to work on masking your air displacement a bit better. It's sloppy to let that much noise escape, and it could be a problem in a crisis situation..."

"Yeah, I know," I agreed soberly. If I'd arrived more subtly at Liz's place, I might have been able to get the drop instead of having that second vampire surprise me - though it hadn't turned out to be much of a problem. After a moment, Isabel nodded, which I took to be a confirmation that our parents were still asleep - since her specialties relate strongly to dreaming, Isabel can tell that sort of thing about people that she's close to. "I... I drill on the sound muffler transit that you showed me, but when I'm tired and excited, it just all goes out of my head. Yeah, I know, that just means I have to try harder."

"I... I didn't say that," Isabel said. "So... Liz is okay, for now?"

"Yeah, but the news looks bad," I said softly. "What do you know about vampires??"

"Umm... very little, except what they've got on 'Buffy.'"

"Well, apparently they don't really need to get invited in," I said. "And I doubt that there's a friendly neighborhood girl with a punky attitude and a natural co-ordination with throwing wooden stakes, who we can go to for help. One piece of good news, though, is that our manuals can be used to repel them... probably they qualify as icons of pure goodness, like crosses." A big sigh. "I'm way too wired to sleep, so I'm probably going to stay up studying the manual for a while... how about you??"

"Wait, wait, back up a second," Isabel said, shaking her head. "Are - are you saying that vampires attacked Liz?"

"Yeah. Two tonight, and I suspect that there are a lot more in Roswell. Both of them got away this time, and that was mostly because of a bluff I pulled. Well, I only bluffed one, but I... I won't be anything like that lucky next time. I'll need to be prepared, instead."

"Oh." Isabel sighed, reached behind her to come up with her own manual, and pulled up a chair, adjusting the lamp slightly along the way to shine a bit more light. "Well, if mom and dad find out that we're here, we can say something about how there's going to be a surprise quiz tomorrow in Chemistry."

"I... I don't like lying to them."

"Who said it was a lie?" I groaned. "By the way, I'm listed on active now. Since you asked me for my help. The powers have me officially listed as being on your team. Michael too."

"Well, umm... I guess I'm glad to hear that," I said. The three of us made a good crew, and this was somehow reassuring. "Okay... vampires, let's see." I traced down the index and gave the book a moment to work its magic.

Over the next few hours, we found out quite a bit. Vampires were listed as 'a genus of Nefarious quasi-construct' - basically, something that the lone power or his chief servants had created and loosed upon the world to do his bidding. Primarily creatures of cruelty, their main weapons were strength and stealth, although occasionally some vampires had been observed to posess more exotic talents like offensive metaphysical firepower, (similar to attack wizardries but controlled by different mechanisms,) or the ability to change the shape of their own bodies. Very definitely, they had a strong natural defense against most wizardries of the true powers... most noticeable when they were targeted directly by a wizardry, but the presence of a vampire in the near vicinity would also tend to disrupt a wizard attempting to use his powers in a way that didn't affect the vampire directly, or to diminish the effects of long-duration wizardries when they entered the area. In fact, they sounded like so much of a pain in the fundament that I was surprised nobody had ever thought to warn us about vampires before.

As far as effective methods of attack against them, the pickings were scarce. An implement of wood thrust through what remained of his or her heart would indeed dispatch a vampire - because of the power of life energy that was inherent in all growing plants. They were also vulnerable to silver and iron weapons, and to sharp edges of most metals to a lesser extent - and could be killed by having their heads chopped off. None of this really seemed much good to me, because we didn't have anyone who was nearly agile and athletic enough to pull of Buffy-ish stunts like that. Vampires could also be set on fire, (dangerous and risky, since they'd be likely to set other things on fire before expiring,) or would be killed by being caught out in direct or strong indirect sunlight during the day. (Good to know, but not that much good because they presumably wouldn't come after Liz during the daytime.)

For wizardry, the manual said that strong magic connected to fire or sunlight could harm or kill them, but I wasn't sure how much firepower we'd be able to muster in that area. The other note was that as I'd thought, two almost tragically simple old standbys had proved to be fairly useful, at least as defensive measures - wands or other pointable implements made out of noon-forged steel, and rowan sticks, willingly donated by the tree they came from, soaked for three nights in moonlight. Trust me when I say that these are nearly the first tricks in the whole book for beginning wizards, but if they might help save Liz, I was willing to go and revisit them.

"I think I know a rowan... a white ash tree - that owes me a favor," Isabel said when we got to that point. "And Michael mentioned something over a month ago about having found some noon forged steel - he was only thinking about keeping some around in case there was a new initiate popping up at school who might need a literal pointer, but..."

"Okay, sounds good," I said. "The trouble with the rowan is going to be how many nights it takes before it's ready... too much of tonight is gone to really start the soaking process, even if you could get a stick immediately. And... and I can't think of the lunar cycle - it won't work when the moon is too close to new, and then there's the cloudy nights to think of..."

"Max, you're rambling," Isabel pointed out. "We'll work something out." She sighed.

"I can't figure why the rowan thing would work, anyway," I added. "Vampires are the quintessential creatures of the night - no other moon wizardries seem to affect them. The power of the steel makes sense - that ties into the force of the sun, but..."

"I think there was a footnote reference about that," Isabel answered, and yawned. "Something about how the innate goodness and life force of the trees reverses the vampire's immunity to archetypal moon power."

"Okay." I paused. "You should probably try to get some sleep before this morning."

"You too," she reminded me.

"Eh - I'll sack out if I can in a little while. Right now I want to look up a sunshine spell that could actually hurt vampires, and see what it would take to handle it."

"Alright, but don't stress about it too long." Isabel got up and kissed me on the forehead, which was something I can't remember her ever doing before. "Or you won't be able to appreciate the real sunshine when it comes in the morning."

"Okay." I smiled slightly as Isabel left my room.

----------

As it turned out, I fell asleep at my desk while starting to read the solar radiance wizardry. (Did Isabel have any way to enforce her wishes with respect to that? Had her mastery of sleep specialty extended to the point of being able to put other people to sleep with a few whispered words?? I wasn't sure.) Woke up closer to six forty-five AM than I would have thought, but I managed to get showered and changed and drive into the parking lot no more than five minutes late.

"Hi, Max," Liz said, walking up. I think she would have gotten into the passenger seat, no matter what we'd said about transiting to the reservation, if I hadn't gotten out.

"Hey. No more scary moments I take it?"

"You said that if I got scared, you'd know it without my having to tell you," Liz pointed out, and I had to hang my head slightly in acceptance of this obvious truth. Which reminded me - I removed the alarm wizardry in Liz's head for now - there was no real reason, it seemed, to be monitoring her during the day.

"Alright. So, am I remembering right that there's a tight knot of trees in the park a few blocks west and a bit north of here??"

Liz shook her head in wordless surprise, and then blurted out, "Um, yes -- at least, well, I think that there are. Been a long time since I paid much attention there I guess."

"That's okay," I assured her. "Well, we'll give it a try. Might as well... no - I guess the time could be important. I'll drive there."

Before we even got to the park, I started quizzing Liz about important details in her life, since that would be necessary to determine her name in terms of the speech, and include her in my own wizardry. The knot of trees was there, and we went inside. Instead of using a premade transit circle, I scratched one in the dirt with a wooden stick, old-fashioned style, and once all the names and co-ordinates and other important markings were rechecked, Liz and I stepped inside and I said those words that would trigger our journey. Once we were there, (me feeling a bit dizzy from the effort of the transit, on top of everything that had happened last night,) we ended up on a wide forest path, with a few little rocky hills visible not too far away. Someone fifteen feet down the path and I turned around at the same time and spotted each other. "You," a tall, severe looking young indian guy said, shaking his head at me. "What trouble are you bringing to us this time?"

"Hi, Eddie. How's the chief?" I asked him, a bit casually. I don't have a great relationship with Eddie Raven, though I try to keep things pretty civil because he's pretty much River dog's left-hand guy. (Not that river dog's left handed - just there's an older associate who's probably more important, and Eddie, though RD trusts him, is a bit more of a gofer boy.) But - well, Eddie was involved in my Ordeal, back when I first got my manual and started practicing as a wizard, and... well, that's really personal and I'm not going to start explaining it now.

"River Dog's busy," Eddie muttered sourly.

"This is IMPORTANT."

He looked at me a bit longer, then sighed as if he could tell that I would not be turned aside. "Hanging out in the cave. You know the way." Then Eddie turned away and headed off towards the Mesaliko village proper, and I took Liz and started looking for the right path offshoot leading towards the rocks.

"So," Liz asked. "How many people here in the reservation are wizards or know about them??"

"Hmm," I said, surprised by the question. "Not quite sure... maybe around a hundred." That's nearly as many wizards as are listed in Roswell, though I don't know how many more are 'in the know.' "About ten to twenty percent of the reservation population, I'd say. Until white people settled in this area, the native americans didn't hide their wizards at all. They were very honored members of the tribe, practicing a form of the art that traced back with very few changes thousands of years. But, well, since anglo protestant culture is one where wizards have gone undercover, the Mesaliko and other indian peoples mostly followed suit."

Liz looked like she would have asked another question, but we had just gotten in sight of the cave, and Eddie had been wrong. River Dog wasn't inside the rocky tunnel segment, but outside of it - sitting on a wooden log bench. "So, young mister Evans," he said in a rough, kinda scratchy voice as we came close. "And Miss Liz Parker... Liz not short for anything else - is that right?"

"Umm, yeah, actually," Liz said, seeming spooked by the fact that he'd brought up that detail. "River Dog, I presume."

"You presume correctly." He sighed and gestured at some tacky lawn chairs propped up against the rock wall near the cave mouth. "Please be my guest."

With a bit of ill grace, I took out the chairs, unfolded one, and sat down on it. Liz didn't seem to mind how garish the seat was. "Mister... um, your local advisory mentioned that you might be coming for a consultation soon. But I think I see in your face that much has happened since you spoke with him."

"Yes, sir." Quickly I outlined my preparations to be warned in case of a threat to Liz during the night - going over to find the vampire incursion, and what had followed.

River Dog frowned. "Vampires - very bad news. Only had to deal with them once." He sighed. "Frankly, I'm more comfortable dealing with the more traditional horrors of this area, the ones that my great-grandparents stood guard against. But the father of all the darkness is moving some of his best performers all over the world, especially now that technology makes it easier, and media spread the fear of them far and wide. But it isn't just Dracula and 'Buffy' that make the vampires fearsome. There's something deep inside them that's... inverted. The power of the life that they once held is turned into its opposite - AGAINST life. Very simple and nasty trick."

"Is... is it true that a person killed by a vampire bite can come back as another one?" I asked.

"Yes, but only if they are so confused or deceived as to accept that fate rather than being willing to move on into Timeheart," River dog said softly.

"Okay, now excuse me, but Max can get the full low-down on vampires in his book, once he has time to do the reading, right?" Liz asked. A bit startled, River dog turned to her, and nodded. "So, can't we put better use to this time by coming up with a plan to, say, protect me??"

"I cannot simply hand Max a plan," River Dog said stiffly. "This is his mission, his assignment." He took a deep breath. "I might have some useful advice, though. First of all, simply providing a competent defense, warding the vampires off or keeping them scared away, will only postpone the reckoning. You would not want to be 'protected' in this fashion for years, would you Miss Parker?" An odd expression crossed Liz's face before she shook her head. "And if Max and his friends falter for just a moment you could be lost. We do not know how long it will be before the window of opportunity to kill you will close of its own nature." Now it was River Dog who shook his head sadly. "No, you will need to lure the dark ones into making their move, and defeat them in combat. If enough of the vampires are destroyed, then their master will call off the 'contract' on Liz's life. The signs of that are reasonably clear."

"What signs?" Liz asked, but River Dog didn't answer that question, as I could have guessed that he wouldn't.

"Okay, so what then?" I asked. "Isabel and Michael are with me, but... but I don't think we could overwhelm even the two vampires from yesterday and... and destroy them, even if that's all that we had to worry about. They're damn tough." River Dog shot a very displeased look at me. "Well, it's more appropriate than usual in this connection, but sorry for the language. Their resistance to wizardry alone... do you know how well they can use that to break through defensive shields? The manual didn't seem to have much to say about that."

"I don't have much information myself, though I've seen a vampire grasp a bubble made of hardened air and soften it within a few seconds from his touch alone." I groaned. The hardened-air shield was fairly basic, but very useful in a lot of situations.

"Okay, back to the point. I... I don't think that I can recruit many other wizards from Roswell to help with this."

"No." River dog shook his head. "Your advisories will be able to lend some assistance, perhaps even pitch into a melee of clear and present danger, but mobilizing the wizards of the town would alarm the Dark one into sending reinforcements. I am not certain that you could attach even one other... not that there are many who would be on-call for such a dangerous assignment at this time."

"So we don't have any help?" Liz asked, frowning.

"I... I would not say that. Simply that the help you can draw upon is not in the town." Liz looked confused, but I stated to smile in comprehension.

"Senior... would you suggest that to draw the vampires into this battle we must make... we should be out here in the woods? Camping, perhaps - me, Liz, Isabel, and Michael?" Oh, wouldn't that be a cosy arrangement?

River dog nodded silently. "But... but what help is out here?" Liz asked, and then seized on the obvious. "Senior - will you help us in the fight yourself? Or... or other native-american wizards among the Mesaliko?"

"I... I have not the strength for direct combat with those so strong as vampires any more, child," River dog said sadly. "And though some of the strong young people of my tribe may assist, it was not they I spoke of."

Liz, confused even more now, turned back to me. "The... the trees," I said to her, since the Dog didn't seem to want to say it. "The animals of the forest. They... they can understand more than you think, and they've fought on the side of Light and Life before. They... they may not understand why it's so important to protect you... but they'll be able to see the darkness that lives inside vampires. If... if we can explain to them that the vampires are on a mission for the Witherer, that should be enough to convince them to join the fight." I chuckled. "And the vampires might not realize that we have help out here either. Could make them overconfident."

"Oh- okay," Liz muttered. "Sounds... sounds like the makings of a pretty good plan." She considered. "Two more questions. One, how do you guys keep me alive until we can head out on the camping trip? Two - what if there's more than vampires to deal with??"

"Uh-oh." I sighed. "You... you just had to ask, huh?"

"You seem to be full of nothing but questions, Miss Parker," River Dog said gravely, and she turned to stare at him. The ol' dog shrugged. "Not that I mind. An inquisitve mind is straining to make strides towards wisdom, or something like that."

"I... I'm worried about the question of an escalation, too," I muttered to River Dog. "Valenti said something about, about somebody else being in charge of the vampires. Somebody who has abilities granted from the Lone Power."

"I... I do not think that you will see the shadow master directly on this mission, my son," River Dog said soberly. "That might enable you to fathom his, or her, identity, which is something that his power is cloaking from the manual. His master or masters will not want him to risk so much. However, since the unexpected can happen... call upon your Advisories by name if you think that the shadowed one has come for Liz personally. They will hear your call, even unaided by spell, and will be able to take the appropriate actions."

"Okay," I muttered, and Liz shot me a glare. "In between now and the weekend, I guess it's all down to me and my friends, making sure that one of us is with you as much of the time as possible, and that we can get where you are in a hurry in case of any vampire trouble when we can't be there directly." A pause. "Isabel may be the one who can take on the most guard duty without arousing suspicion. Would your mom think it was weird if you wanted to go out to a slumber party with a new girlfriend tonight??"

"Well, yeah, considering that I don't even go on slumber parties with my long-time girlfriend Maria anymore," Liz said with a big sigh. "But maybe I can sell it anyhow, if it'll help save my life."

"Okay, well, we can work out the rest of this at school," I decided. "No need to ditch just to take up more of River dog's time, I think he's told us all he can for now." Liz shot me a look, as if she'd really hoped to get out of first period from all this. "And vampires won't be attacking by day, will they??"

Liz's glare just got a little dirtier.

------------

It was actually still well before nine when Liz and I transit-ed back to the park - up in the reservation with River Dog I'd managed to forget that we'd met up so early, and Liz agreed to go and pick up some cofee and pastries over at Coughey's Shoppe. While we were waiting in line at the drive-in, Liz said in a soft tone, "What does Valenti have to do with this wizardry business, and which Valenti?"

"Uh-oh," I muttered, realizing that I'd forgotten to just say 'the Advisory' when asking River Dog about the vampires' boss. I thought of trying to clam up, but the look on Liz's face made it pretty clear that she wouldn't accept any such evasions or stonewall tactics peacefully. Come to think of it, Liz had been dating Kyle Valenti for most of last year, hadn't she, and they'd been kind of tight even after she broke it off. Of course she'd be upset by the idea that Kyle might be a wizard, and have kept that from her.

I hated to give up Jim's cover, but maybe Liz would have found out soon anyway. "Sheriff Jim Valenti is one of the advisories for Roswell. He's who I went to see yesterday afternoon, while you were working on the assignment with Michael."

"Ohh, I see," Liz blinked. "One of those 'not quite authority figures but helpful' ones that you mentioned." I nodded. "For a second, umm, I guess I wondered if you meant..."

"Kyle," I muttered. "Yeah. That's kind of why I told you."

"Does... does he know about his dad, do you suppose??" Liz asked.

"Umm, yeah, he knows, though I don't think he can really talk about it with outsiders," I said, and Liz nodded, accepting that without asking whether that was a metaphorical-obligation thing or a more direct limitation enforced by a wizardry. (I don't think anybody's really mucked with Kyle's brain, tempting as the thought is sometimes.) "He... he gives Isabel and me grief about it sometimes... feels upset at all the time that his Dad has to spend on other things, particularly when that involves close relationships with other kids his age... about stuff that he doesn't share in."

"Yeah, I can understand why he'd be pissed about something like... oooh." Liz broke off while I paid for our order and accepted the little cardboard tray and brown paper bag. "Something like that."

"I know," I agreed. "Sometimes wizardry runs in families... like with Isabel and me, but there's been no indication of Kyle getting an offer."

"You... I think either you or Michael mentioned that before," Liz said. Since we had plenty of time, I just pulled into a parking spot instead of actually getting back onto the road. "About getting 'offered' wizardry. What's that like? Does a senior or some magical creature come to you and lay out the situation?"

I smiled. "No, not in any offer that I've heard. The offers come through the manual themselves."

"Oh, right," Liz replied, though her voice still sounded a little doubtful. "You - you did mention that, how somebody gave it to you without realizing what it meant, and... and you read enough about it to understand about wizards, and realized you could take the Oath, and go through the ordeal, or... or not step up, and then you'd probably lose the book or pass it on to somebody else." She bit into a tea biscuit and smiled for about a second. "So... so are all offers like that?"

"Umm... a lot are, allowing for cultural variance... there's differences among peoples and species that don't have a physical manual interface... like the druid-wizards, who are still very much around and kicking in Ireland." Liz nodded. "Also, when the offer is made to somebody who's already learned about wizards and knows one, often the offer is made via the manual of somebody that they know. That... that was the way it went with Isabel and Michael, actually. They each read the oath out of my manual, without realizing that the other had or would. And got their powers close enough in time to have a Joint Ordeal... which apparently is a bit more fun than going it alone, even if the opposition is at least twice as tough." We ate and drank coffee in silence for a bit more, and Liz asked a few more questions, I can't really remember about what right now.

"Say, there's something else I've been meaning to do," I mentioned, after checking the clock on my car stereo. "Wouldn't normally do it in front of a... someone without the Art, but... but on this mission I guess getting you familiar and comfortable with wizardry any way I can would be a good thing, huh?" Liz reluctantly nodded. "Okay, let's see..." I flipped to the back of the manual with a practiced motion and touched a small square, which expanded over the full double page and showed more and more complexity as it went. "Okay, I'm initiating a live real-time connection with Local Area Provisioning, in Albuquerque - with a voice link. Don't speak once the link is active."

"What... what do they provisi--" Liz cut off as I waved a hand in her direction."

"New Mexico supply... hello Max, what can I do for you?" That was one of the provisioning wizards who had picked up... at least, I'm assuming that it was a wizard. I wasn't quite sure on how exactly this worked, and it might be one of the manuals themselves, or a minor power, who I was speaking to.

"Yeah, I'm on active with what looks like a fairly tricky assignment, and I'd like to request an upgrade to computer-assisted manual access."

"Hmm... just a second - yes, I have your assignment detail here, and there's a credit flag on it. Hmm... however, I'm afraid that it will not extend quite far enough for double access. You'll have to return your current manual to get the upgrade. Is this satisfactory?"

"Hmmm..." I wasn't quite sure about that. I liked the manual I had... I'd grown used to it, even somewhat affectionate of the little guy... but if this upgrade could help me do what I had to do, help keep Liz safe, then I had to pursue it. "Maybe, depending on what's available. I... I was thinking of a software disc for my home computer, carrying the magic with it, but... but that won't be as portable and accessible as the book-form manual. I know, I can use a shrink spell on my computer or put it in a portable space-time pocket, but still..."

"Well, we do have portable computer manuals available," the voice said. "I'm putting some of the most popular models up on your page." Ah, yes, a number of familiar PDAs and other pocket gizmos with manual abilities... there was a WizPod, but I couldn't see a souped-up music jukebox meeting my needs.

"Maybe..." I thought about the possibilties a moment longer. "They all have wizardry-powered extension routines, yes? So, for instance, if I connect it to my home computer, the manual software can take that over, while it's hooked up??"

"Yes, those routines are standard." I considered a few of the pokcet PC type models, a bit too large to be palm-sized, but it had a nice big screen and one of those tiny thumb-style keyboards, and was small enough that I could carry it around anywhere without even needing to use wizardry on it... well, almost anywhere. I tapped it to make my selection. "Okay, when and where can we do the exchange?"

"Umm... you'll be heading to classes soon, right Max?" I chuckled in acknowledgement. "Then I'll midi-gate it over to your advisory there, and she'll make the swap. Hope that this help, Max."

"Yes, thank you very much. Dai Stiho." I cut the connection then, and turned to Liz, wondering if she had any questions. There was apparently just one.

"What does Dai Stiho mean??"

"Umm, wizardly speech, kind of an all-purpose greeting or signoff. Like Shalom." Liz nodded. "The usual translation into English is 'go well.'"

"Okay," Liz nodded, and I pulled out onto the street once again. We'd spent so much time over breakfast that there wouldn't be much leeway before the bell. If I wanted to pick my new manual up before first period, I probably won't get to tell Isabel and Michael what River Dog had said until later.

"So, there's another advisory wizard at school?" Liz said with a teasing tone in her voice.

"Um, yeah. THE other advisory, besides Mister V." Thought about it a second, then realized that there wasn't any harm in revealing the identity now - since I'd probably want Liz to come with me to get my new manual. I wasn't that wild about leaving her alone and unprotected even during the day and in a public place. You never knew what kind of tricks the forces of evil could come up with besides vampires. "It's Miss Topolsky, the guidance counselor."

"Hmm, really? I always thought there was something a little - erm, unusual, about her." I shrugged.

----------

"Okay, here you go Max," Topolsky said, pushing a box across her desk. "The unit itself is ready to run straight out of the box of course, and it comes with carry-case, connection cradle and cable, and spare styli."

I laughed slightly, and dropped my old faithful manual onto the desk. "No screen protectors?"

"Nope, but I don't think you'll have much problem with the touchscreen scratching."

"So, what's going to happen to Max's manual?" Liz asked Topolsky. "Or can you tell us? Does it get teleported back to Albuquerque or somewhere like that?"

"Umm, hi Liz," Topolsky said. Probably she had to make a bit of a mental readjustment to Liz asking questions about wizard's business. "No, I'm supposed to hang onto it for a little while at least. Suspect that somebody here in Roswell will need it."

"So we'll be getting a new wizard?" I asked, intrigued by the notion. Maybe it would be one of the kids over in the junior high.

"Wait a second," Liz said, putting her incisive mind and the facts of wizardly life I'd told her over breakfast to work. "If somebody new's getting an offer, don't you have to send the manual out somewhere that they'll find it? Put it in the junior high library maybe, or... I dunno, under a bench in the park or something?"

"Maybe it'll come to that, but the Powers don't know the best place for me to 'seed' the manual so that it'll be found by the person who will need it." Topolsky sighed - and right then the bell rang. "Well, you kids had better run off to class now I think."

"Yeah, yeah," I said. "Well, thanks for the new gear - even if you were just the gobetween."

"It isn't such a hard gig, being an advosory," Topolsky quipped. "Now off with you."

------------

I didn't have every class with Liz, more's the pity. In fact, there were two whole periods where not even one of my 'helpers' (ie Michael and Isabel) could keep an eye on her, and I just had to hope that a few simple alarm wizardries and being ready to bolt out of class on a moment's notice would be enough. Actually, there was no sign of further trouble all day, and Liz was starting to crack jokes about me being overprotective, but I didn't care. I was taking this gig seriously, and it was one that I only had to let my guard down for a second at the wrong time to flub.

Speaking of Isabel and Michael, we had lunch with them, and they both listened intently to news of the consultation with River Dog. Isabel made a few wisecracks about not really being the camping out type, but both of them realized that this was a very important chance, not just in the mission to protect Liz, but to keep vampire evil from casting a long-term shadow across the town of Roswell. Michael was more eager for battle than any of us, but... but even Isabel and I would do what we had to. That, like so much else, was a part of the deal.

I also showed off my new pocket manual to the guys. Already I was getting the hang of doing simple spells with it, and more complicated wizardries looked like... like they'd be less complicated than usual. As with most computerized manuals, the pocket PC had several capabilites that weren't meant to be obvious - voice command and voice response, for one thing, and it listed something like twenty gigs of onboard flash memory.

After classes were over, all of us had to meet up with our history partners, at least to check in. Isabel and Maria DeLuca were very nearly done, though Isabel had to recheck a few questions, and Alex and I still had nearly a dozen questions finished. But we were all done before dinner, and I met up with Liz to try and figure out what we could do in the evening so that she would be protected as the evening started to fall.

"Well, maybe a movie," Liz suggested uncertainly. "You're probably big on sci-fi, huh? 'Return to the ringworld' is playing at the Mirage cinema."

"Oh," I sighed. "They probably ruined the book... well, the second Ringworld book." Liz's face fell, and I shot her a smile. "But hey, I think I could manage to keep from shouting out at the screen."

"Well, if you want me backing you up at a movie, then Alex kinduv has to come along too," Isabel said, stepping up to the table.

"Umm... do I need the both of you?" Liz asked uncertainly.

"It'll be well after dark by the time the early show lets out," Isabel reminded her. "Vampires could be out in force. Oh, Max, did you and Michael grab that noon-forged steel?"

"Yeah," I agreed. They were just a few slightly rough rods, and the one I had tucked into my jacket was uncomfortable when I was wearing it, but we needed everything that we could get. "You want one for now? The rowan sticks won't be much good until they've had a few nights to charge."

"Yeah, alright I guess," Isabel said, sighing. "Though metal and fire-heat energy is more a manly-man kinduv thing. Just hope that the weather stays clear overnight, or there won't be any moonlight to soak up."

So we got ready to head out to the movies. Liz asked about inviting Maria along, but I said that it'd be better if we could keep the size of the group from ballooning up. Also occured to me to wonder, if Isabel was anticipating a vampire attack, why did she really want to invite her boyfriend along? But I knew that Isabel would just get bristly if I suggested that she might be putting somebody that she cared about in danger, and I needed to stay on her good side for this, especially since she was the pretext for having Liz stay close to me tonight.

The puppeteer aliens in the movie were a lot better than I'd expected. Some of the Ringworld races themselves were much less slickly done, but I managed to lose myself in the adventure up on the screen, glad for two hours to forget the much messier one that I was personally embroiled in.

It was on the way out of the cinema that everything started to go wrong. Maria had been waiting out front, more than a little pissed off at Liz for letting herself be talked into sneaking off without saying anything, and as the conversation proceeded down the street, I trailed along behind Liz uncertainly. Isabel was calmly scanning the surroundings, while Alex watched his two ex-friends bicker with what seemed like a slightly smug expression.

And then Isabel suddenly called out 'Danger!" Liz's head shot up, while Maria and Alex just looked blank.

I fumbled with the opening on my jacket, trying to pull out the steel rod, not knowing where I should focus. And then a heavy something landed on me from behind, wrapping strong arms around my chest and squeezing. I heard and felt something crack before I could react.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	4. Chapter 4

I really wasn't sure what was going on for a while after that. Well, a few things were pretty clear. That the vampires, or some other kind of supernatural bad'uns, had come back, and disabled me right from the start. Yeah, that I was pretty certain about, as depressing as the fact could be. I wasn't sure how many enemies there might be, but I was very worried about Isabel - and Liz. Isabel was tough and determined, but how many enemies could she fight off by herself with one noon-forged steel wand?

And... and what would happen to Liz if neither Isabel nor I were able to protect her?

The pain I felt in my mid-to-lower chest was harsher than anything I'd ever felt... well, except maybe for one other thing that I could compare it to. The pain that I'd felt from Liz, borne with her, when I was healing her after the shooting. But... but somehow it was harder to bear this because it wasn't part of a spell, because I didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe that was because I was holding up under it by myself.

Still, I was on a mission, and that meant that I didn't just have the luxury of slumping there and waiting for it to all be over. For one thing, if I didn't do SOMETHING to help, the vampires might be the ones left standing when it was over, and I didn't think that they'd just leave me here, or call an ambulance. They might be on a mission of their own, but they'd take my blood if they had a chance to. Or would that make our deaths look too suspicious? I couldn't tell. Maybe they'd just kill me and make it look like a random mugging gone wrong...

That was the wrong kind of thing to think about. I muttered one short spell to help me concentrate and focus better through the pain, and it definitely helped. My vision cleared a little, though I couldn't really figure out what was going on. It seemed like there was a fight going on, and Isabel was working her wand well. Alright, that seemed like a good sign. I could hear Liz's voice too, scared but not in pain - at least, not yet.

Didn't feel like it would be a good idea to try and move. I thought I had multiple cracked ribs and maybe some internal bleeding. A few weird noises from the fight that I couldn't identify. Don't worry about them just yet. What... what could I do to actually help?

Call Michael - that seemed like it was worth a try at least. He could probably risk a short-transit over here without his foster dad catching him - it was late enough in the evening that Hank would be drinking and paying the rest of his attention to a football game on the portable television or something like that. So I cast a spell to send a mental message to Michael - that was easy. Sometimes he and I can exchange thoughts without hardly trying, but that's generally more of an annoyance than a useful thing... if you knew the sort of thing that Michael thinks about when he's alone you'd see why.

Okay. Got a brief reply from Michael - apparently the spell wouldn't send a real thought back, but I knew that he'd gotten the message and understood how dire things were. Okay, what next? I could fight back with magic, but might only get one shot off, so I'd have to make it a good one.

But I couldn't think of a really great offensive spell that would get through a vampire's wizardry defenses, so I settled for taking my own noon-forged steel wand out and concentrating on watching the melee. Isabel still seemed to be doing well - she fired on one vampire for what was probably the tenth time or more, because his morale broke, he turned and ran, and then tripped and collapsed unmoving twenty feet away. Looked REAL intimidating like that.

Somebody hit the ground solidly - had a vampire thrown him, or her? (Whoever it was.) And... and Liz yelled softly again, which allowed me to locate her. She swung an enthusiastic straight left at a dark-clothed figure, but he took the punch without appearing to feel it and replied by clutching her shoulder with a grip tight enough to make Liz howl in agony.

This was it - this was the moment in which I had to make my move. Took my aim carefully, so as to not put Liz in danger, but just as the stream of hot sunfire poured forth, someone else charged into the vampire. Both of them were hit with the red heat discharge, and I wondered who I'd accidentally tagged. Presumably whoever hadn't gotten thrown by the third vampire. And between the effort of firing the wand and that of thinking, I guess I blacked out for a bit.

Next, I remember Isabel looking down at me. "Come on, Max, stay with me, I need you to tell me the spell." She shook me then, which I couldn't help but think wasn't called for, especially considering what I'd already been through tonight.

"What... what spell?" And, before she could reply, "Is Liz okay? Where the heck is my-- my..."

"Liz is just fine, although Alex has a bad burn and Maria some cuts and bruises," Isabel snapped. Oops. Okay, now I knew who my sunfire bolt had accidentally hit, and was glad that Izzy wasn't giving me any more grief about singeing her boyfriend just yet. "Michael is on guard in case more vampires come. And I need a spell to heal you, physician, because you're in no shape to do it thyself."

"What, too lazy to look in your manual?" I muttered. "It's a textbook case of unarmed combat trauma. Patient has... has multiple cracked ribs and might be bleeding internal..."

"I don't have enough patience for the damn book right now, Max, or for your smart mouth," Isabel snapped. "I tried, but I couldn't see a basic spell for this, and the more advanced ones lost me right away. But this is your specialty - I KNOW that you can tell me what to do."

Well. I appreciated her sincere confidence, but it was hard to concentrate on anything right now, never mind the details of healing spells. "You... you'll need to shed your own blood..."

"Of *course* I know that much," Isabel shot back, exasperated. "One of the vamps dropped a dagger, and I've got it here. But I need you to tell me the words."

"I... I don't remember the words, really I don't," I told her with a regretful smile. Liz was crowding close, and I couldn't blame her for being curious. This was her first real chance to see a spell of the same sort as had saved her life. There was also a feline figure on the ground looking intently at me - was it Maowah? What was he doing here??

"The manual, open it," I prompted Iz. "Healing chapter, first - no, the second double page." The first double page would have a bit of introductory material and basic first aid that wouldn't have enough oomph to help me now. "Read out the spell headings, quick."

"Alright." Here, Isabel switched into the Speech, so as not to have to mentally translate from the manual. *To relieve a second degree burn on the limbs.* Still a little light, though that might help Alex - assuming his burn wasn't on the chest or stomach area. *Fever break. Staying external flow of blood. For a serious slash close to the heart. Setting broken limbs. Impacted trauma to the cage. Sealing simple internal...*

"That's the one," I managed to blurt out, in English.

"Is this simple internal bleeding?"

"No, the LAST one," I clarified. "Impacted trauma. You're not that familiar with the terminology - it's to the *rib*cage."

"Oh, alright." And before I could ask if Isabel was sure about reciting the unfamiliar spell, she had already started. Probably it was a good thing that I hadn't spoken and made her feel less confident. Recognizing unfamiliar technical details in another specialtiy can be trickier than using an unfamiliar spell, so long as you can pronounce the words right.

The universe leaned in close around to hear what she said, and it almost seemed to shake as Isabel cut her own hand and let blood flow. On some level, I expected that my own pain would go away at the same moment as my sister groaned in torment. But there was an overlap, which makes some sense. When the healing was over, there would be no continuing pain for either of us, but in the meantime we both had to bear it in full, like a down payment to eliminate the continuing debt or something like that.

And then it was over, and I sat up without pain or soreness, (well, maybe a little twinge in my side, nothing to seem ungrateful over,) and impulsively hugged Isabel. When I looked around, Liz had just bent down to pick up Maowah, (man, is there anything cuter than a pretty girl holding a cat? Sorry.) and Alex and Maria were also close. Michael had moved off down the street a bit, holding a steel wand out as if warningly to any vampires that might be there. "Okay, um, I guess it's my turn to play doctor." Whoops, bad choice of phrasing, but oh well. "Guess you're up next, Alex... Isabel, umm... why don't you stand on guard the other way?" I felt weird asking her to leave her boyfriend behind, but the suggestion was too obvious.

"Wait a second," Alex put in. "My... my turn for what? You - you're not just talking about bandaging my arm up and putting ointment on it, are you buddy? What the heck is going on around here??"

"Don't think that the ointment would do much good if it got applied on TOP of the bandage, bass boy," Maria muttered snarkily.

"Alright, come on, let's not bicker among ourselves," Liz said to her friend.

"Since when are any of these guys part of 'ourselves'?" Maria replied, and Liz looked like she'd been kicked on the kneecap. "I... I guess, much as it pains me to agree with this loser, I have to stand behind the 'what the hell is going on' sentiment?? Who were those guys, and... and how were you guys able to shoot red laser beams at them? Is... is this some kind of publicity stunt for the UFO center?"

"All, all very good questions," I told her lamely. "But... but maybe you'd better let me tend to Alex's wounds, if not your own, and all of us can hold up somewhere safer to talk."

"And just where is safer?" Isabel stage-whispered at me, possibly unaware that the others could also probably hear her. "Remember, these guys don't need an invite to come inside a house. Do we want to give them a chance to follow us home?"

I growled in frustration. Going off to the woods wouldn't be an option for a few days yet, and I didn't think that Maria and Alex would sit still without getting told the facts for that long, or even until sunrise. There probably wasn't any good substitute for vigilance, and we didn't really want to put any parents in the line of fire if we could help it. Still, this place seemed way too public and also way too empty for my tastes, (in a perverse contradictory way.)

So I dropped into the speech to consult with Isabel in an undertone. *I don't know. Where can we go, to make sure that the vampires won't catch us by surprise as we're talking??*

Isabel blinked and rolled her eyes very expressively at me. *Sometimes you're very dense. Both of us, maybe, since I didn't see this earlier. We can be safe anywhere, for a little while... as long as we stay put.* I raised an eyebrow at her. *Just set up wards.*

*Will... will that work against them?*

*I don't see why not. Even though they have a powerful disrupting effect on both offensive and defensive wizardries, a ward that's far enough away will at least act as an early warning system. Either the wards go off, or they get disrupted, and we'll be able to tell either way. Soon enough to prepare for a more active defense.*

Alright, that should indeed be good enough. "Okay, umm... we can have the talk anywhere, I guess, though probably not right here in the street..."

"How about there, then?" Maria asked, pointing down a cross avenue. There was a sign for a restaurant or actually a 'grill' down nearly a block away. Dan's Texas-style grill. It looked a bit pricey, but at this point I was beyond caring.

"Fine, wherever. Alex, will you let me look at your arm first?" Alex offered the burn up for my examination a bit sulkily, and it wasn't as bad as I'd been worried about... didn't need to spill any blood over it certainly... just talk to the nerve and skin cells mostly, to repair some of the hurt damage and numb the pain that he'd have been feeling. Maria just pulled some band-aids out of her purse and got Liz to help her put them on.

"How... how did you get through all of that with so little damage, Maria?" I had to ask her. "I heard what was going on, even if I couldn't really see well. One of the vampires must have been throwing you around good."

Maria stifled a huge series of giggles, and Liz smirked a little bit. "Wait, what am I missing?" I mumbled, turning around to Isabel.

"You've - you've kinda got it backwards," Isabel said, chuckling herself. "Maria was kind of throwing the vampire - maybe more than one vampire."

"Heh?" Now this made no sense. "Like picking him up and THROWING him?"

"No," Maria said, rolling her eyes. "Like he came charging at me and me judo-throwing him." She mimed appropriately with a grappling-type motion of her arms and a no-nonsense swing of her curvy hips. "I... I was pretty scared I admit, but REALLY glad that Mom made me take those self-defense lessons."

"She was really something," Isabel joined in. "I was half expecting her to pull a wooden stake out of the back of her sweater and seriously start going Buffy on us." A pause. "Not sure if you want to hear this, but... I think she should come up with us to the woods this weekend. That Judo stuff might come in handy."

"Up to the woods?" Alex asked. We had almost arrived at the grill by this point, Michael bringing up the rear. "Who's going up to the woods and why?" Isabel rolled her eyes - she probably wished that she hadn't said anything in front of him.

"Well, we'd probably better start at the beginning, and not until we can speak without much fear of being overheard," I said. This was accomplished fairly well - the grill wasn't busy, and two tables were pushed together in an otherwise empty corner of one room. "Well, let's see." I sighed. and tried not to worry about sounding like I was slightly crazy. "There's a war being fought, here and everywhere, between the powers that created the universe and the powers who want the worst things to come out of it. On the side of the light, many of the soldiers are wizards - people who are chosen as they pass from childhood into adolescence and offered the chance to learn how to manipulate the forces that bind existence together. Isabel, Michael, and I all made that choice."

"You went first, though," Michael muttered. "You never let us forget it."

I rolled my eyes slightly. "Now... well, somebody has marked Liz out to die before her time, and is using the vampires to make sure that happens. I've been assigned to protect her, and I've asked my friends to help me out."

"Okay, let's see," Alex said. "Offered the chance to learn wizardry... you don't go away to Hogwarts in the summer or something, do you?"

"No, sweetie," Isabel said, reaching out to hold his hand. "You spent pretty much all summer with me, remember?" She sighed. "Most of what we learn, we study by ourselves... using the Manual." She brought out her own book, which was pretty small on a first glance - a soft cover trade paperback, with the fake title 'A time for dreaming' on it - looked like a romantic thriller or something like that.

"So, some weird guy, an older wizard, shows up and offers you the manual?" Alex asked.

"No, Max said that usually the manual offers itself," Liz said. I sighed and got ready to go through all of the questions one more time.

-----------

I drove Isabel to school the next day, picking up Liz along the way, (which wasn't routine,) and Alex as well, (which was ordinary enough.) The night had gone well enough, no sign of vampire or other danger, so maybe the bloodsuckers had had enough for a little while after the fight outside the movie theater. As Alex climbed into the back seat of the Jeep, I could tell from the look on his face that he was still thinking about everything we'd talked about the night before. "Hey, man."

"Hi." Alex nodded at Liz and I, and leaned over to give Isabel a peck on the cheek before buckling up. "So, the three of you, and Michael, are going out into the woods this weekend, setting a kind of ambush for... oh, I can hardly even believe I'm saying this, an ambush for the vampires?"

"Well, yeah," Isabel agreed, as I stayed quiet and tried to concentrate on my driving. "With the help of the trees - I explained all of this last night."

"I know, just trying to... well, get it all straight, and... and admit that I believe it," he said. "Never thought that I'd accept something like this so easily, but between what I saw during the attack and... and the fact that I know you wouldn't fool around with me on something like this, honey..." Isabel smiled just slightly. "And I want to come along."

"Ooh," Isabel and I went just about in unison. "Will your parents be okay with that? I'm not even sure about my parents," I said. "Last thing we need is to get saddled with an adult chaperone who doesn't understand the real deal, and all the adult wizards who might step in are too busy to..."

Isabel, meanwhile, was going on a completely different track. "...Really dangerous," she said as I trailed off to listen. "Liz needs to be there because, well frankly, she's the bait, and all three of us are going to have our hands full making sure that she's safe, maybe. We can... can take care of ourselves, and the last thing that I want to do is put you in the path of the undead menace, one more time. This isn't anything personal for the vampires, so even if they know that we're dating you should be safe enough if you stay in town and aren't around Liz much."

"Oh." Alex's face fell. "So there's... there's no way that I can help, just get in the way?" From Alex's expression and what little I knew about him, he really wanted to argue the point, but wasn't sure enough of this new reality to be sure what reasons would be defensible. "I, um, well, I did tackle that vampire yesterday. Admittedly, Max would probably have tagged him instead of scorching me if I hadn't, but if he had been knocked out completely then..."

"That does make some sense, guys," Liz put in. "I'm not saying that there isn't some danger, but the more friends we have to help, the better off I think. And Max, didn't you say that the big spells, like the one to rouse the trees, can affect your senses of what's around you, and you can't really react to defend yourselves without breaking the spell pattern? So lookouts and defenders are necessary, even if they have to be just ordinary people."

"All... all right," I said after a long moment. "Isabel?"

Now it was Isabel who seemed uncertain of how to reply... I could tell that my sister didn't want her boy to be putting himself in the path of danger, but couldn't really see how to deny him the chance of going along without metaphorically emasculating him. "What do we do about our parents? I've gotten Mom's seal of approval on this routine, but she did ask if you were going to be coming along and I said I didn't think so."

"We can ask and see if they have any objection," Alex said. "My folks can be overprotective, but in general they trust me. We'll tell them we won't be in the same tent, no funny business..." He considered. "Out of curiosity, how did your Mom react to the Max/Liz thing? Or Michael, for that matter?"

"She knows that I am *not* going to hook up with Michael, no matter what," Isabel said. I had to feel relieved that Michael hadn't been around to hear that - it would be just like Isabel to say that right in front of him, and even think that she was doing a good deed by needling his ego. "And Max said that he and Liz didn't like each other, which I guess she's entittled to fall for considering that she's never really seen them together..."

"Hey, that wasn't quite what I told her," I said, but didn't want to get into the full corrections because it had taken some weaseling that I hadn't been proud of to tell the truth and yet say something that hadn't sounded like Mom and Dad would be better off to lock me up in the basement or something. (Yes, I know that normally it's the girl who is threatened with a deluxe home dungeon, but my parents aren't quite normal either.) "I think I agree with Alex, that if you guys are straight with them, it shouldn't be a problem. Say that Alex found out about the trip and wanted to tag along."

"Good enough," Alex said, though Isabel still didn't seem quite satisfied with the whole arrangement. "So, umm, there was something I wanted to ask about - about this whole forces of darkness thing."

"Be careful," Isabel said. "Referring to... to those people, even without using one of Their traditional names, can attract unwelcome attention. Better to be as oblique as possible about it."

"Okay, um, I'll try," Alex agreed. "But, well, but where did He come from, anyway? The big cahuna of bad. Are we talking storybooks, war among the angels and being cast into a lake of fire, or what?"

Isabel shrugged and nodded at me, which I thought was a bit unfair since I still had to drive. "Old stories generally aren't free from distortion, even in the manual, but there are cores of truth to them. The most archetypal one I've ever heard runs like this - once, very long ago, when all universes were new, there were a handful of great Entities, charged with ordering what was, fashioning new places, and creating rules that the worlds would run by. Most of them came up with something that was good - though the details differ... Laws like gravity, and the behaviour of gases, planets where plants and animals could grow and thrive, patterns for galaxies and clusters. One hung back, refusing to take part, and putting off the others, and the lesser powers that were being created to handle the smaller details, until finally he wrote a great law and great truth into all of creation."

"Uh-oh, I'm getting a bad feeling about this," Alex admitted.

"Yeah. Hang on a sec, gotta focus on parking."

"The great storyteller, leaving us hanging," Liz kidded, though I'd been over some of this with her already, enough that she could have spoiled the surprise for Alex if she'd really wanted to. "The law was something like the one that we know as the second law of thermodynamics, that entropy in a system will always increase with every transfer of heat until it is at a maximum, that every known universe will eventually die when its energy becomes equally distributed. And the truth was every living creature would be subject to entropy locally, as well, that all would be born mortal, doomed to die."

"So that entity, that power, was... was Evil?" Alex asked. "Definitively?"

"There are still those who argue," Isabel said. "Especially about whether It was malicious when it first acted. But the other entities did not approve of what entropy wrought, and so ever since then the... the lonely power has been an enemy of the light of life." She got out of the back seat. "And we, as wizards, have to spend too much time struggling against it when we could be using our gifts to improve what is, instead of fighting to keep it from getting worse."

Nobody said much as we headed over towards the school building. Three quarters of the way Maria came up to the four of us, and glared very pointedly at Alex.

"I think that's my cue to go see Marko," Alex said, referring to somebody who might end up in the garage band that he was trying to put together. "Bye, sweetie." He kissed Isabel, no quick peck this time, but an unashamed PDA kiss.

"Actually, I think I'll tag along, if you don't mind," Isabel said. "Bye Max, bye Liz."

"Hey, why didn't you say something before..." Alex started to ask as they headed off.

"As if you kissing me is something that I'm looking for excuses to get out of?" Isabel teased him back.

I shrugged slightly to myself and turned back to Maria, wondering if Isabel had been trying to subtly snub-back the girl who was snubbing her boy. "What's on your mind, DeLuca?"

"I'm coming along on this tree thing," Maria said firmly. "You need me, you need my physical skills. I've shown that I can handle vampires decently, even if I'm not really at Slayer level or anything, And I don't really trust you guys to take care of my Lizzie."

"Okay..." I drawled after a moment. Shot a look at Liz, and she just kind of giggled quietly. "Well, I think that if we let Alex come along, there shouldn't be a problem with you coming too." Considering how, umm... how *extreme* Maria was being in all of her reactions to Alex, I did wonder if I would be setting off a thunderstorm here.

Somewhat to my surprise, there weren't even fireworks. "Darnit, he got in there first, huh? Well, I guess I'll accept the argument that he's the wedge, if it's working in my favor."

"It... it does mean a lot to me that you want to help out," Liz said to Maria, in a low tone. "And I agree, it looks like you might be helpful. But - are you sure that you want to take on this risk? A few judo moves aren't really that much protection against these guys, even if you did okay last night. I have to take on this risk, so do Max and the others, because it's a job that's been assigned them. And I can't really escape the vampire threat no matter where I go, until it gets properly settled..."

"And I have to stick with you, and help out where I can," Maria said firmly. "No alternatives, no arguments. Got it?" Liz nodded. "So, Max, I have to admit I have some questions about the way this wizardry stuff works. You explained about this universal Speech last night, and a bit about casting circles and saving words, but..."

"Pick one question," I laughed. "That's probably about all the time we have left before homeroom - if it's one that I can address in that time, even."

"Alright," Maria agreed. "Is there a limit on how much wizardry you can do, like daily spell maximums or power points or what have you?"

"Are you thinking of fantasy games and that sort of thing?" I asked. Maria shrugged - I certainly would never have thought of her as a role-player type. Maybe she isn't and just picked that sort of gamer notion up from somewhere else. "Well, magic takes bodily energy to fuel it, like muscular activity except it doesn't go through the same routes. Occasionally you can get some kind of loaner boost from the manual, but even those need to get paid back in energy later. Nothing is free."

"Hmm." Maria was interested in this. "So you feel physically tired after... after casting wards or shooting one of those steel rods?"

"Yeah, though neither of those are big energy leeches unless I'm shooting an awful lot," I said. "I guess that when we get up to the woods, you'll be able to ask us a lot more."

"Okay," Maria sighed, but I wasn't sure if she'd wait that long.

----------

Things moved pretty quickly from there. Isabel didn't seem to have any big problems when she let our parents know that Alex would be going along for the camping trip, though Dad read her the riot act about sneaking into Alex's tent or having him sneak into hers, and mom made a bunch of hints about if I was interested in dating Liz or Maria... and then said how glad she was that I'm making new friends at school. That was pretty much it. Speaking of which, the tents and boy-girl thing was a bit of a tricky one to sort out. I had sort of assumed that we'd get three two-person tents and Isabel and I would be sharing one, but she categorically vetoed that arrangement as 'way too icky', and I guess I could see what her point was on that score.

She suggested getting three-person tents so that all the girls could be together in one, and the guys in another, but I didn't really see the point in that when we already had so many two-person tents available. (Our family had two good ones - Isabel and I used to share when we were younger and our parents shared the other - and then when Izzie started complaining she switched tents with Dad so that it was girls and guys. Also, Alex's parents had one it turned out, from when they'd take trips together around their anniversary.) So, eventually it was sorted out that we'd either buy or borrow one more small tent, and then have four. Liz would be with Isabel, (so that she'd have one wizard around while she slept,) and I'd be paired up with Michael. Alex and Maria would have tents of their own, which worked out pretty well with the parents because they weren't a potential couple, and indeed still seemed to dislike each other more than a bit, though neither of them had been willing to back off on this whole thing because the other one would be around.

There wasn't much more vampire trouble before the weekend. The rowan wands that Isabel had prepared got their fill of moonlight, and she started carrying one around instead of the noon-forged steel. The night before we were going to leave for Frazier, Michael was on bodyguard duty when a group of four vampires tried to surprise him and Liz on the way back from the library - Michael just used a shield to ward them off and called Valenti, who showed up with a half-dozen other adult wizards, and the vampires took off when they sensed that much power approaching.

Focusing on school was hard with that much other stuff going on in my head. Not just worrying about pulling this off so that Liz would be safe, and obsessing over the details of the pact that I'd need to make with the trees, but the fact that Alex Whitman and Maria DeLuca now knew that we were wizards, and the fact that I still wished my relationship with Liz could go more than vague friendship and wizardly business. On the other hand, with that last part, I wasn't at all sure that getting personally involved with her before my protective assignment was done would be a particularly good idea.

Oh, I also met up with Maowah on Thursday morning - he'd taken off the night of the vampire attack, after Isabel had healed me, apparently because he'd been able to tell that we had 'human business' to talk about. Even though Mao himself had downplayed it, Isabel told me that he probably saved my life in that first instant when the vampire jumped me... he'd been following them, aware that they were up to something particularly no-good, and had jumped out off of an eight-foot high wall and scratched at the vamp's face with his front claws, distracting him just long enough for me to lurch brokenly away, and giving Isabel enough warning to pull out her wand and spot the other two vamps. He volunteered to come up for the Frazier woods trip too, lending his eyes and his other senses, as required to our mission.

Finally Friday afternoon rolled up, eighth period dragged itself around the clock face, and the bell rang. The six of us students met up in the parking lot, and Topolsky hurried out the side doors to join us. "Max, hey, glad I caught you. Got a message from the senior."

"Right," I said in a whisper, and took the little slip of paper she'd handed me. Alex and Maria still didn't know that Topolsky was a wizard, and I didn't really want her to break her cover to them without a pretty good reason for it. The paper read, in black Speech lettering, something like this: 'Max. Good news. I've managed to cast a wizardry on the vampire clan here in Roswell, and consulted the Area Senior regarding your mission. If you can lure at least eleven vampires up into the woods and destroy them, then the window of action against Liz should close and she will be relatively safe. The dark emissary here in Roswell will probably direct his remaining vampire minions to fall back, and attempt to restore their numbers by converting human locals. Valenti will lead the watch against such attacks. Good luck with the trees! R D.'

"Okay, so I'm stuck with the two of you?" Michael muttered, looking at Alex and Maria, as I went back to join the others.

"Umm, why stuck?" I asked.

"Well, I suggested going up in two different groups," Isabel said. "One being the people who are ready now, and the other being people who have to go back home and pick up what they've packed."

"Ahh, right." Isabel's stuff, and mine, was all in the Jeep already, and Liz was carrying a big duffel that seemed like it would be nearly as long as she was if she was stretched straight out next to it, and also a much smaller bag. (She was wearing a fairly long jacket too, which didn't seem to flatter her particularly, but might be useful if it was cold out there in the campsite at night.) I considered insisting that we all stay together, and convoy out to the woods, but Michael could take care of any danger pretty well, and there was only so long until night would fall. The three of us could make ourselves useful starting to set up camp. Also, I wasn't particularly in the mood to insist on giving up an opportunity to spend time with Liz when the whole gang wasn't about, even though Isabel could be a buzz-kill all by herself.

"Alright, umm... do me one favor, though," I asked, facing sort-of towards both Michael and Maria. "Before you leave town, swing by the parking lot at the Crashdown... and there should be a friend waiting there. Don't worry, he won't take up much space."

"Heh?" Michael seemed confused, and then I saw him remember something that I'd mentioned about the cat. Since we were all ready, and the school was way out on the side of town that faced towards the woods, it didn't make much sense for us to go all the way downtown. "Got it, man. Have the campfire burning by the time we get there??"

"I'll do my best." So Isabel hugged Alex goodbye... I wonder why he didn't bring his stuff to school? I can picture Michael, and probably Maria, being too disorganized to arrange that, but Alex seems more together... and he had Isabel to remind him. Surely he'd have preferred to ride with his girlfriend than his ex-best friend Maria. Oh well, and we piled into the Jeep and headed west. Michael and Alex got into the Jetta that Maria was driving, and they pulled out of the parking lot going the other way."

"Something's bugging you," Liz pointed out once we were really past the city limits, as Isabel sat in the back seat and stopped paying any attention to us. "Does it have to do with what's going to happen out in the woods? The vampire attack stuff?"

"Well, yeah, there's a few things that I'm concerned about," I told her in a small surge of impulsive candor. "Well, first, there's sorting things out with the trees in the first place. River Dog couldn't broker the negotiation beforehand for us, and neither can Isabel or Michael, though Isabel's probably a bit closer to being your regular talk-to-the-trees kind of wizard." Fairly dark stare suddenly coming up at me from the back seat before Isabel started gazing out at the desert again instead. "Because... because I was originally given the mission to help you, I'm going to have to talk to them, and I've never been good at speaking tree language. You kinduv have to alter your sense of time to get much done, because they live more slowly than we do, and that's tricky. Also... well, trees have gotten used to a passive, umm, lifestyle. Though they're still capable of 'waking up' and moving, fighting, what have you... they probably won't be too wild about doing it short of a clear and present danger. Because the major danger that the vampires pose is, umm, is only to you, I'm going to have to convince them that they should rouse themselves, and put their own branches and trunks in harm's way, for your sake."

"Oh," Liz said in a small voice. "Yeah, I guess that that makes some sense. I... I hope that that won't be too hard." She sighed. "I... I have a hard time believing that I'm important enough to be the focus of this much... all this energy and effort, you know? I mean, I always kinduv thought of myself as the perfectly ordinary hometown girl - daughter of the couple who run the alien-theme restaurant. In Roswell, you don't much plainer and more obvious than that."

"I... I disagree." Liz looked over at me. "I mean, yeah, you came from ordinary, humble beginnings... more so than me, heheh. But... but it didn't take much to see that your life would be spectacular, I think. I don't know what it's going to be, but I don't find the thought surprising that somebody powerful is worried about you... about what you're going to become." Big sigh. "And... and I'm proud to help you stay alive long enough for that to happen."

"Okay." Liz sighed. "So... you'll have to talk to the trees, when we get there. That's one, more or less. But you said you're concerned about 'a few' things. What else??"

"Umm... the tactical situation," I mumbled. "Not sure how many vampires there are or when they'll come after us, assuming that they'll bite at the bait before the weekend is over and we need to go back to school. But this 'tree gambit' is something that we can only use once, and only when there are a LOT of vampires after you. So if they send just a few first, we'll have to beat them or drive them off using other means."

"Which you've done before," Liz pointed out. "Twice now, counting the morning in my room and the night outside the movies. Maybe they'll come in with the entire tribe, or whatever, first thing." She sighed. "But maybe not. Is there anything that I can do to help out... besides learning how to yell 'MAX' really good?"

I laughed. "I... I'm not sure. Maybe we'll look in the book to see if there's anything that a non-wizard, who isn't skilled in the arts of Judo, can do to defend themselves against a vampire."

"Well, there's the fire thing," Isabel said, as if to nobody in particular. (Her good study habits were REALLY going to help us out, I could tell that much. Probably, by this point, she was coming up there in the top few hundred list of vampire experts in the country. Well, as long as that list didn't require more field experience than she'd picked up so far.) "Even well trained vampires are afraid of fire, so carrying around some kind of torch might be something that you could use to freak them out for a moment. Oh, and then there's the whole 'icons of good and light' thing. Do... would you call yourself a religious person, Liz?"

"Hmm?" Liz blinked. "Umm... not really. I go to church with my parents a few times a year, but... I'm not sure, I guess I have a hard time believing that what goes on in that building has much to do with God."

"Silver cross might work anyway," Isabel said pensively. "I packed it for you just in case. Religious icons are effective for warding off vampires, but only if there's genuine belief behind them. Not necessarily belief in organized religion or the institution of the church... but if you believe that God is real and he loves you, and that the cross is a symbol of that, then the vampires would be vulnerable to that belief in your mind, and thus to the symbol."

"Okay, well, I'll try," Liz said, a little doubtfully. "And do you have one for Maria? She's a pretty serious catholic, actually... in the best way. Not sure about Alex."

"And... I brought one more thing for you, Liz," Isabel continued offhandedly. "A keepsake that, well, a friend of mine who isn't from around here gave me when she visited last. I never thought that I'd need it, but it might be useful for you."

"Heh?" Liz replied. "What is it... a big bottle of holy water?"

"No," Isabel said. "A Sperennian Ion blaster -- hand-held size. Not quite sure how effective it'd be against vampires, but it'll probably have some stopping power."

"Wow, umm... thanks Isabel," Liz replied. I was impressed too. I knew about her 'friend' from out in the Gorval sector, near Spirennio, and even if Isabel didn't think that present had any practical value for her, she probably ascribed it some sentimental importance. Also, Isabel's never been that good about sharing in general, so this kind of showed me how seriously she took the mission... or something like that. Maybe she was already starting to feel as if Liz, too, was a friend. That'd be good, I guess.

After that Isabel kinduv zoned out again, and even Liz and I fell silent for a little while. "So, that morning... when you were invisible and I didn't realize you were there... were you tempted to just let me go ahead and change without saying anything?" I rolled my eyes for an instant, knowing that no matter how bored Isabel looked, she was now paying very close attention... and looked over at Liz. She was grinning at me, with a bit of a flirty look in her eyes. Well, I guess I couldn't get that upset about it, now could I??

"Umm... tempted?" Quick breath. "All... all kinds of tempted, yeah. But... but it definitely wouldn't have been fair to you - I'd have been invading your privacy, and deceiving you in a way, like a lie of omission."

"Oh, I know that," Liz said. "But in a certain way... it's nice to feel that I'm attractive enough to be spy-worthy."

The laugh that I made in response to that came out half-choked. "Definitely spy-worthy, if it comes to that." Pause. "Are... you're not seeing anyone right now, are you?? I - I know that I saw you around with Kyle this summer..."

"No, Kyle and I are definitely over," Liz said, her tone of voice even more decisive than her words, (which was saying something.) "He was a fun fling... hopefully I was for him, too, but... but we don't make much sense as a couple, and I think we both got to figure that out at pretty much the same time." And with that and a little hand gesture, Kyle Valenti was entirely dispensed with, which suited me fine. "And no, I don't have any other prospects out there at the moment, umm." There was a little twist to that last sound that made me wonder if she was mentally leaving me myself as a half-exception to the blanket statement. "Looks like it won't be long now."

For a second, I actually thought that she was talking about her dating life still, and then I realized that the canyon and the greenish forest of Frazier woods were visible up ahead and to the right of the road, and she was obviously talking about our car trip, and the destination that we were drawing closer to. "Umm, yeah." Sighed. "Out of curiosity, just how much were you going to change, if I hadn't said anything. We're just talking shirt-only, right??"

Liz hesitated a long moment before slowly turning her head to shoot a sidelong look at me. Isabel was looking forwards in the jeep as well now too, instead of out the window. "Umm. Maybe you should try to forget I said that," I mumbled.

"Okay, I'll do my best," Liz whispered. And I just drove on.

-----------

The campfire was indeed burning well before Michael and the other two showed up, and tents set up and other 'making camp' activities finished. Isabel came up behind me; tapped me on the shoulder just as I finished laying out some sleeping bags in the Michael/me tent. "What, already? It's not even sunset yet."

"Well, I kinduv thought you'd want to take care of this well before the twilight starts to fall in," Isabel pointed out. "Once it's dark, the vampires can move freely."

"Well yeah, but I don't expect them to get here that quickly..." I muttered, though I wasn't exactly sure why. Whoever was using the vampires as his or her minion might have enough dark powers to find out where Liz had gone, and the vampires could probably drive a car - steal one if they had to. "Well, alright."

"Alright what?" Liz asked, popping up nearby with a worried look on her face. "What's it time for already??"

Isabel shrugged, so I figured it was up to me to explain. "The... the thing I told you about talking to the trees. Because... because of what I told you about, the different speed at which trees live..."

I couldn't explain any further just at that moment, and Liz turned to stare at Isabel, confused. "I'm going to use a wizardry to put Max to sleep, a very deep sleep where his brainwaves will run more slowly than normal. He'll begin to dream, and then I'll invite a few of the nearby trees to join in his dream. They'll be able to talk there... at least, that's the idea."

"In... invite the trees into his dream?" Liz repeated, amazed.

"Yeah, umm... Isabel's had some experience lately working with trees and dreams lately," I said offhandedly. There are no accidents, and all is done for each -- the fact that Isabel had chosen to get herself involved with that nightmarish pine was really paying off now.

"And... and it's not dangerous?" Liz continued. Isabel shrugged awkwardly... cross-species dream contact was always tricky, she'd told me so often enough, and apparently she couldn't immediately come up with a reassurance for our bodyguardee.

"I... it'll be fine," I insisted to Liz, willing the words true even if I couldn't report them as accomplished fact. "Wish me luck."

"If everything's going to be so fine, why do you need it?" Liz teased, and then suddenly she threw her arms around me in a hug. "Thank you... thank you so much for all you're doing, and knock 'em dead. Except, not literally, because we need those trees still standing." I smiled at her and laughed.

So I lay down on top of my sleeping bag, and Isabel repeated the words of the first part of her sleep wizardry. I hadn't been feeling tired, but somehow that didn't seem to matter as the tent grew fuzzy around me and I loop-de-looped and corkscrewed through thick blackness, surrounded by thrumming guitar music, before landing in... in a room. A bedroom, and suddenly I realized why it was familiar. Liz's room. Turned around, and sure enough, there was Liz, or a dream image of her at any rate, lounging on the bed. My mouth dropped open a bit. So this was starting off as one of THOSE kind of dreams.

Not like Liz was bare naked, or even wearing sexy lingerie, which might have been a bit more cliche for an erotic dream intro. But the getup she was in definitely seemed closer to teenage-guy-fantasy than normal-Liz-Parker - hair treated to surround her face and shoulders in a remarkably big cloud of soft dark waves, her eyes big, soulful, and seemingly even darker brown than usual. Makeup I couldn't be sure about - never really good at that, but her face seemed prettier than usual, alluring without artifice. (Isabel would probably throw in a comment about how much effort it took to look naturally beautiful.)

But what attracted my attention more were the clothes... what there was of them. Very tight white top, long-sleeved, cropped at the bottom, just a hint of translucence. (Groaan.) Potentially illegal black micro-skirt. Red high heels...

"So happy that you could pop by, Max," Dream-Liz breathed, stretching her arms up. I was starting to wonder if this wasn't just random dream weirdness or subconscious wish fulfillment. Was... was there something, either buried deep in my mind or outside me, who had set all of this up in an effort to distract me?

Well, unfortunately, even if it wasn't a diversion, I knew that I couldn't enjoy myself for long with Dream Liz. This was serious business, and Real-Liz's life was on the line, along with maybe those of the rest of our crew. "Umm, hi, it's nice to see you, but I'm afraid I can't stay long," I mumbled, and looked around. If I was to look for a tree, outside the window would probably be the best, rather than go through the door. Given that this was dreamscape, the exits probably wouldn't connect up to their usual places - and in fact, on the other side of the glass panes I could see a pastoral scene, instead of the balcony and the wall of the building next door to the Crashdown cafe.

Liz made a high-kick-feint with one leg, (ooh,) and then stood up. "You can come by anytime, Max. Holding me at arm's length isn't the only way to keep us both safe."

I smiled slightly. "Well, thanks... and I'll bear that in mind - once the dream is over. With the real Liz. Right now, there's other things to take care of."

Dream-Liz pouted prettily. "And here I thought that I was the girl of your dreams."

"Hold on to that thought, beautiful," I teased her, and for no very good reason I stepped close and kissed the dream girl. (Why not seize the night, or something like that.) I've only kissed, or well, BEEN kissed by a girl a few times, but this one was definitely really great. And then I jogged over to the window. One segment of it actually didn't have a glass pane over it, so I ducked through there and looked back just once. Liz had turned onto a pretty thorn bush with delicate and familiar-looking white flowers.

Hmm... was that a sign that she might have been not Liz at all, but who I'd come to meet? No, probably something symbolic instead. I wasn't here to talk to shrubs, but tall trees. And, looking around outside, I spotted a nice big one growing up near to the cottage that Liz's room had been transplanted into. Good enough. "Um, Dai Stiho," I said formally to the tree, using a fairly human inflection of the speech, and hoping that it could understand me like this.

"And go well to you too, little two-legs," the tree replied, its leaves and branches shaking as if they made up a stereo speaker or something like that.

I waited for anything else, but there was no further comment, so I fell back on my rote speech. "I have come here to ask a boon of the trees of Frazier woods, on behalf of the..."

"Well, maybe you'd better go well over THERE, then," the tree cut in, pointing a limb over to another stand of greenery which looked like it might indeed be a transplanted bit of the forest I had fallen asleep in. "I'm just a tree of your subconscious mind, bud, but I think those guys are real trees from Frazier." And the tree sighed in a very human-like way.

I knew that I should head right over, but a mix of curiosity and empathy kept me near this tree a bit longer. "Are... are you disappointed because you're not a real tree?" I asked it.

"Well... wouldn't you be bummed if you found out you were just a character in some Antaresian's dream?"

"Well... I'd be curious," I admitted. The only surviving intelligent species of the red supergiant Antares' star system are shapeless, blobby, and translucent, and I couldn't think of any reason why they'd dream of humanoids. "But I guess that's a good point. Is... is there anything that I can do to help?"

"Help a dream figment become real? Why would you help a dream figment at all??"

"Umm, yeah." I sighed. "I'm a wizard, and we try to help whenever and however we can."

"Help those who are alive," the tree replied. "I'm not sure if I qualify for that."

"If you're in my dream, then you're a part of my mind and a part of my life," I said. "Now, what can I do... tell another tree of your kind to drop a seed in a particular place and call the seedling by your name?"

"We don't name our seedlings," the tree said sadly. "Each young one can tell what his or her name should be." He sighed again. "You really should be continuing on your mission, Emissary."

"Well, tell me your name first," I asked. "I'm Max..."

"...Max Evans, yeah, I know that of course. As far as my name... I feel like I'm not entirely sure about it since I haven't rooted for real, but you could call me Sshhrullisst."

"Shrullist,": I repeated carefully. "Okay, so I'll..."

"More of an extended sshing sound at the start."

"Sshrullist."

"Good enough I guess."

"Okay. Go well." And I waved bye to Sshru and headed over to the thick stand of trees on the other side of an open field area.

"Dai Stiho, young wizard," an even thicker and bushier tree said as I approached. It was gnarled with the years and rough weather, but seemed very wise.

"Dai, Mister Tree." That sounded a bit weird once I'd said it. "Umm, I have come to ask a boon of the trees of Frazier woods, on behalf of the powers of light."

The tree chuckled softly. "Ask it then. I doubt that you have come asking for rowan wands, for you seem to have many already."

A soft chuckle. "No, not really. There... there are vampires who have come to the town of Roswell, and they have threatened the life of my friend, Liz Parker. The powers that be have charged me to protect her, but our arts are of limited use against their dark natures."

"Ahh, I begin to see... you wish our help in defending the girl?"

"I wish your help in vanquishing the vamps," I declared. "Passive defense is of limited use, for we cannot remain here in your glades for ever. But if we meet them in combat, destroy the vessels that have been irredeemably dedicated to the Kindler..."

There was a hush as of a strong wind blowing through branches, and I realized a minor misstep. Many creatures were superstitious about any mention of the Lone one, the power of the darkness, by any of its many epithets, believing that to mention the names could bring the attention of the lord of death himself. Which isn't entirely unreasonable, but since that one is constantly scouring all of the universes for places to focus its attention anyway, I didn't think it was worth the effort of speaking circuitously. Two of these names, that I knew of, were particularly frightening to any tree-like species - the Witherer, and the Kindler of Wildfires. Oh well. "Sorry," I muttered.

"I understand the need for strong language," the gnarled tree said. "So... you would wish to lay a trap, then? For I doubt that even vampires would meet us in open combat if they realized that we might rise against them. You would camp in the cleared place next to the running waters, arrange your tiny houses of strong cloth and keep a cooking-fire burning, and wait for the undead ones to come after the girl?"

"Well, yeah, that was pretty much the plan," I admitted. "Will you co-operate? We have the spell to call you to the cause, enabling you to rise from fixed roots and move for a short time, but the wizardry is worth nothing without your consent."

"Truly enough it is not," another tree, a thinner one, with peeling white bark, whined. "And even with our advantage of numbers over the vampires, if they set their strength against us, they may be able to break trunks and maul roots. I am secure in the love that the great Planter has for each and every one of her seedlings, but still, I have no great desire to make my passage into Edenswood so soon - not for the sake of a little mammal girl."

"Keep your twigs silent, Ffflavana, if you cannot rustle sense," the first tree snapped in a grumpy tone. "Mammals and trees alike, we are all children of the great tall ones." He made a sighing sound. "It... it is not as simple a thing as you might image, though, Max, to come to your aid. Our willingness to fight, and the words of the spell, yes, these are parts of the requirement, but not the whole of it. Our place is to sit rooted in the ground and grow and drink in the light of the sun, drawing up water and other good things from the soil. Wizardry can provide you with the mechanism by which trees will rise from their ground and do battle... but the lore of the wizards also teaches you that there is a price to every work of the art, yes?"

I nodded, and the lead tree continued. "To take a great host of any creature especially people so stable and consistent as the children of the soil, and work a wizardry on them allowing them to transcend their nature, even for a short time... and the price is probably greater than any one wizard can pay at a single time, by exertion and force of will, as you are used to paying for minor wizardries. Sometimes, when the need is obviously great enough, the soil itself will help to pay the price, such as when that... that cruel one himself is preparing to water the ground with his evil. But for one girl, no matter how important she might be to the future..."

"Hmm." I muttered. "Well, I'm not the only wizard who'll be working on this casting. Isabel and Michael will be helping... Isabel is the one who worked the dream-spell to bring us both here." The branch made an even-so gesture. "Well... and I'm on active assignment. The manual can lend power to us in such a circumstance, to be paid back on a gradual basis later."

I hated the prospect of that sort of thing, and sort of hoped that the powers would see fit to make good on the debt in their own fashion, assuming that Liz survived, but it didn't seem like the sort of hope that I should admit out loud to a person like this tree. Probably wishful thinking anyway... sometimes the only reward you get for a good deed well done was to be set a harder and more painful one. Sounds unfair - but this universe isn't fair, and even the Powers have far too little energy to spread around, too many nasty jobs to get done and few enough volunteers of any kind, wizards or not, willing to help out when the going gets tough.

"The repayment may be even harsher than you expect, Max Evans," the gnarled tree intoned. "If I am to say that I and my people shall hearken to thy call, putting our branches and our trunks in a living circle about the undead brethren, to prevent their escape, break their bones and their bodies... then I must have your promise, Max, that you will pay the price for the calling, in whatever coin and fashion the debt be called in."

Whoa boy. For a wizard, these promises could get fulfilled in the most unexpected ways. I'd seen the stories in manual precis of other wizard's assignments... a young Initiate on his ordeal, maybe, or an older wizard sent onto a dangerous mission. In the midst of the quest, they have to cast a great wizardry or make a promise to the universe, like this one, in order to stop or contain a great evil. The adventure continues, with some epic climax, and the wizard loses a friend to the dark ones or goes through some great sacrifice to finish the mission, thinking that they'd paid off the debt... only to find it popping up later when they least expect it - sometimes even paid off via something that they commit to by accident, inveigling them in yet another mission that entails certain death...

But I was too far deeply into this to turn back now. "I swear to you now, by my art and by all those that I love... that I will pay the price if it is asked of me."

"And the rest of the Cirtanian oath."

I groaned. "...and may I wander long without rest, nor may my soul come home until the end of the universe, should I forswear."

"Very well. We will come when you ask."

Oh, boy. As the dream faded out, I had just enough time to wonder what I'd committed myself to before falling into a deep sleep.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	5. Chapter 5

Part Five

I was roused out of my slumbers a timeless moment later, feeling a soft hand gently shaking my shoulder. With some effort, managed to open my eyes and, in the dimly filtered firelight, saw an angel crouching above me. "Liz??" She nodded. "What - how long did I?"

"About two and a half hours ago," she said softly. "Once the dream ended, Isabel said that it would be better to let you sleep for a bit." She sighed. "Everybody's here, dinner's been cooked, and night has pretty much fallen. I, umm, I thought that you'd want to be around, just in case the vamps are quick on the move. And - well, nobody but you really knows how the tree thing went, just yet."

I sat up further and smiled. "Well enough. The trees have agreed, and will rouse to battle when we call." It didn't seem to be worth mentioning to Liz the promise that I had had to make, the price I'd agreed to pay, to get their agreement. After all, I didn't really understand what I had committed to myself. "And, you said something about dinner?"

Liz laughed, a sound that always managed to lighten my mood. "Yeah - nothing fancy, just hot dogs roasting over an open fire."

"Sounds delish," I admitted, crawling well out of the sleeping bag and towards the door of the tent. Given the position that Liz had been in and how she reacted when she realized that I was moving, this actually brought both of our faces very close for a moment, so that I could see the smooth perfection of her cheeks and the curve of the corner of her lips in more detail than I'd really expected to. And then she backed away slightly, and I tried to stifle a soft sigh, headed out to the campfire, and within just a few seconds was munching on an already-roasted wiener inside a bun, while holding a second one over a nice hot patch of coals on a straight stick that somebody had foraged. (Not one of the enchanted rowan wands - those were too special to be used for regular cooking duty like this. Also not really long enough.)

Everybody wanted to hear about how the tree parley had gone, in great detail, and so I began to tell the tale - skipping over the part of the dream with Liz in it, because that seemed far too personal, but mentioning the dream tree who wanted to be real, who seemed to strike a chord with a few of the listeners. Maria and Alex, particularly, were always interrupting with questions and clarifications, and seemed to be always stopping just short of obviously sniping at each other, while sneaking in any traces of sarcasm that they could get away with.

When I got to the part with the head tree talking about us 'pitching our cloth houses' (tents) and making cooking fires, Alex shot a nervous look at the campfire. "Do trees have a problem with fires? I mean, even small fires like this one?"

Isabel fielded the question. "Not really, though it might be disquieting for them to see one - like how we'd react to a graveyard - or a crematorium, I guess. Any tree is worried about a forest fire, of course, and thus they tend to get touchy about fire safety - and then, they'd obviously get upset if we chopped down a living member of their species to use for firewood. But of course we haven't - that's just good camping common sense, to use dead or fallen wood."

"We don't even have an axe big enough to cut down one of these trees," Michael remarked. "Well, not except for that little guy I suppose," he added softly, pointing to a sapling on the far edge of the campsite.

"No talking about a-x-e's," Isabel warned. "Okay, what else??"

"Hmm." I continued through the tale, mentioning the one dissenting tree who didn't want to risk his life for Liz and how the chief tree had told him off. "And, umm, and so then they agreed, and that was pretty much the end of it," I muttered, fighting an urge to grimace. It was a half-truth at best, but my reasons for not telling everybody about the real ending of the parley still seemed to make sense. Finished the first hot dog quickly, and then I inspected the one on my stick. Michael tossed me a fresh bun. Isabel asked Maria something about her mother, as I pulled the wiener off the stick and into the bun, and started drizzling some mustard and hot sauce onto it.

"Ohh?" Liz asked, and I looked up at her. "Tabasco on a hot dog? Is that a wizard thing?"

"Umm... no, I don't think so," I muttered, taken off guard. My entire family has a fondness for hot sauce, and Michael shares it, in fact, he's probably more of a Tabasco freak than any of us. But hey - this is the southwest, and chili pepper fans are everywhere. It certainly didn't seem to be something that was correlated with other wizards, as far as I could tell. "Just like the zing, I guess," I finished lamely.

"Okay, so we've got the trees on our side," Alex summed up. "What about anybody else? Friendly wolves? Killer birds? A few good bears??"

"I don't think that there are wolves or bears in Frazier woods, honey," Isabel commented. "Or very fierce birds, for that matter."

"Hmm... yeah," I said, but my attention was on the basic idea. I'd mentioned to Liz that animals might be willing to join in the fight too, and then gotten distracted by the vision of the trees marching to our aid. "Well, I can go asking around I guess. It's the nocturnal animals who'd be a help against vampires. At the least, they can serve as a warning system."

"Are there bats who live up this way?" Liz asked.

Maria nearly jumped off of the log she was sitting on. "Wouldn't bats be on THEIR side??"

"No living creature is on their side," Michael said sourly. "They all know that vampires are bad news. The stuff about flocks of bats or wolves following a vampire's command is just Hollywood invention."

"I - I'd hate to be so sure about that, actually," Isabel countered. Michael glowered at her over the fire. "Yeah, as living creatures bats are on the side of life, and should rationally choose to oppose vampires. But the evil ones are always good about confusing and misdirecting all creatures, not only people. It's JUST possible that they might be able to make some kind of animal, who they have a resonance with, turn against us." She considered. "But if we can find some bats first, we can at least put forward a case of our own. That would probably make it harder for the vamps to cloud their minds."

"Sounds worth it," Liz said. "Am I allowed to come on the night-time nature hike, or is that considered too dangerous for such a vulnerable person?"

I laughed - despite her words Liz's tone hadn't been impatient or bristling, but gently teasing. "Shouldn't be any great risk. I've got a passive sensor spell covering this area of the woods. It won't keep vampires out, but they're not going to get close to either of us without me knowing about it." I reached out and grabbed a steel wand. "And I'll be armed."

"What about you, Michael?" Maria asked.

"Eh." Michael shrugged. "I'm not a chat with the animals type like Max is."

"Oh, that reminds me," I suddenly said. "Speaking of animals - you DID give Maowah a ride here, yeah??"

"Oh, he's about someplace," Isabel assured me. "Possibly doing his business out in the woods." There was a pause. "Speak of the cute little kitty..." Sure enough, a familiar feline shape came out of the shadows around the edge of the clearing and sat a little way from the logs, interested but standoff-ish.

"And just where do we do our business, anyway?" Alex added. "I didn't get any warnings about having to squat in the woods."

Isabel giggled - maybe I chuckled too. "There's an outhouse down the path that way," Michael said, pointing out parallel to the road we'd driven on through the woods. "Shared by a couple different campsites, so it might be busy. If you can't wait, then there's always empty patches of woods."

"Eww," Maria sighed. "I knew I shouldn't have agreed to camping. An outhouse??"

"It stinks, more than a little," Isabel said, "but it's not too bad otherwise. The toilet seat is okay, there's plenty of fairly good biodegradable toilet paper, and a little sink with a cold water tap."

"Hmm." Maria considered that. There was a brief silence as I finished my second dog.

"Boy, didn't even realize how thirsty I was getting until now."

"There's some soda, umm, over here." Liz reached out, nearly losing her balance in the course of a very long stretch, and I offered her my hand to help herself back up to a good sitting position. She laughed a bit under her throat and handed me a can of pretty cheap generic cola. I popped it open and took a drink - on the warm side and VERY fizzy, but better than nothing. "Ohh, and marshmallows if people wanna get started on dessert."

"Sounds good to me," Isabel admitted, and pulled out a roasting stick. The package of marshmallows was ripped open by Michael, and soon six of them were being held over the warm coals of the fire. Two of those six were on a Y-shaped branch that was being held by Michael.

"You don't like roasted marshmallows?" Liz asked, blinking slightly as I took a bite out of an unblemished white cream puff, loving the cool and sweet taste of it.

"Nah, never developed the taste I guess," I admitted. "Like them much better this way."

"That's because Max always used to burn his," Isabel said. I shot her a look, but she's had years to develop an immunity to any glare I could muster. "I've never seen anyone with as much of a propensity to set marshmallows ablaze as Max did, when he was around eight."

"Oh, that's a shame," Liz said. "Alright, come on, this one is for you, to show you how good a well toasted mallow can be."

Isabel giggled - and suddenly I got an impression of what was running through her mind. This happens sometimes when wizards are accustomed to working together - another implication of the Speech, taking place in a nonverbal mode, almost entirely mental. When the wizards involved are brother and sister, it can be extremely awkward at times.

In this case, what I got from Isabel was that she was admiring the flair with which Liz was flirting with me, and guessing that I wouldn't be able to turn down her offer, no matter how uncertain I might be about the actual toasted marshmallow.

Isabel knows me pretty well. "Okay, sure," I mumbled, as Liz took a raw marshmallow and devoured it herself - probably to make up for the fact that she wouldn't get to eat the one that she was toasting at that point.

It was pretty good, I have to admit that, though not at all like marshmallows as I knew them. Warm, nearly hot, and very gooey and sticky inside, with a kind of softly crunchy skin surrounding it. Liz asked if I'd been converted over to a toasted marshmallow fan, and I kidded back to her, saying that I would be if other talented people kept volunteering to cook them for me.

And pretty quickly it seemed that everybody had eaten their fill, and the fire was starting to die down. Michael, Alex, and Maria chose to keep sitting around the campsite and keep an eye on it, 'since there's no good reason to put it out until we go to bed,' Michael said, and Isabel went off to use the outhouse, carrying a flashlight. "I guess that it's just the two of us for a nature walk, then," Liz said, giving me one of those very-hard-to-resist smiles.

"Yeah, indeed," I agreed, wondering if Liz actually wanted to take things beyond flirting. "The night dwellers are out - I can hear them and sense them moving through my wards." Sighed as I got up and went to fetch a flashlight from my own tent. Liz followed. "You realize that my doctor Dolittle bit won't seem very impressive, right? It'll just sound to you like I'm making funny animal noises."

"Like when you were healing Maowah?" Liz asked.

"Yeah, umm, I forgot that you'd seen that," I admitted. The way Liz had brought up that memory suddenly reminded me of how strongly I'd been attracted to her when she'd been mad at me for keeping secrets. Turned around to look at Liz - she had a flashlight in her own hand already, and was looking very ready for a hike in her knee-length shorts, light boots, and a tank top with the message 'Seventeen and the world at my feet' on the front of it. "Okay, umm, let's start off that way I guess," I said, pointing at a small path that led to the northeast. "Think that there might be a bat colony in that general direction.

"Sure," Liz said, and we said our goodbyes to the other three. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a feline shape stir, and realized that Maowah was following us without calling attention to it. Hmm.

"And I guess this won't be exactly like when I was talking to Maowah, though the distinction might be hard to tell for you," I said, feeling nervous and returning to our previous conversation as something 'safe' to talk about. "He spoke to me in the cat dialect of the Speech, so I spoke it back to him. For these forest dwellers I'll likely be trying to speak to them directly in their own languages, which isn't the same thing."

"Why not?" Liz asked. "Don't - don't animals understand the speech, the same way as I did??"

"Yeah, but any of them who haven't learned how to speak it don't know how they understand it," I said. "They realize that it's 'different', and they're often not sure how to react to it." Liz considered, and then nodded.

"So how will you talk Bat-speak then?" she asked. "With a magic spell?"

"With a minor wizardry, yes," I said. "The manual has information on the communication modes of every Earth species, as well as those of countless other worlds. And there are temporary access routines, so that I can use most of the Bat-language glossary as if I were already familiar with it, instead of having to memorize it all the old-fashioned way. It's a short cut, and only works on a short-term basis without reapplying the access routine. But - well, the animal languages that Ive had time to learn so far are the ones that you'd find inside towns or cities, not wild forest species."

"Oh - so would you know how to talk to dogs?" Liz asked, a faintly smiling tone in her voice. (No, not exactly 'happy' - I don't know how to describe the sound of it except that her voice was smiling, okay??)

"Yeah, I'm pretty good with dogs," I admitted. "Do you have a dog? No, I guess... umm... well, never mind."

"No, I don't," she agreed. "My parents and I talked about it once, but living above the cafe, no yard for him to go out in - it just wouldn't have worked out." She sighed forlornly. "Maria had a dog, when she and I were first friends, a long time ago. A big friendly dalmatian called Leo." She chuckled a little bit. "He died just after her father left them, and she was a wreck for weeks."

"What's loved lives on," I mumbled. It was a routine mantra for whenever the subject of death and loss came up too directly, but obviously Liz picked up on it, making a questioning hmm sound. I tried to pretend that I hadn't understood her.

"So, I guess maybe that answers the question of whether wizards believe in an afterlife, huh?"

"Some of us are lucky enough that we don't have to settle for 'belief,' I admitted, navigating the path and the conversation with just a bit of difficulty. (Too bad I couldn't illuminate what Liz was thinking about with my flashlight.) "It's rare enough even for one of us to get a glimpse of Timeheart and come back into our own lives- that's what we call heaven I guess. Because it's in the very center of existence, a long way from our universe where things grow old and perish - where what's cherished doesn't endure. But everything that's dear to anybody makes it into Timeheart, or so they say, so - well, nothing much is truly lost."

"Everything that's dear to anybody," Liz repeated. "I like that rule, actually." And when she said that I realized that Liz was still very deeply worried that this plan of ours wouldn't work, that she'd die, that the vampires would get her. Well, hearing about Timeheart might be a reassurance to her, but I was NOT about to let her go there yet anyway, not ready to fail in my charge. "So, umm, you said that it's rare for wizards to come and go from Timeheart. Have you made it?"

I paused before answering. "Just once, about two years ago, during the summer. Isabel and Michael were pretty new to the art then, and I was just starting to think that I'd seen everything." Liz giggled again. "There was a - an invasion of sorts, with dark spirits from the legends of the Navajo and other native peoples manifesting themselves all over the state. Maybe something weird happened to you back then."

"Umm... I'm not sure," Liz said. "It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't remember any details. But go on."

"An army of wizards was called up, to re-enact an ancient battle from the legends - and when I say re-enact, I'm not talking about anything as safe as civil war recreation hobbyists. This was life and death, and a lot of good people got the bad one."

"Ouch," Liz said. "Anyone you knew??"

"Well, there was another Advisory in town, back then." Big breath. "Peter Standing - he was one of the librarians at Baldwin street. Maybe in his late twenties." I sighed. "And so that's why Topolsky came to the school as a guidance counselor."

"And this sort of thing happens often?"

I couldn't tell whether she was talking about large-scale battles against the forces of evil or wizards dying in the course of doing their duty, and didn't want to ask. "Too often for me to like it." That answer was the same for either question.

Somehow by this point I wasn't sure I wanted to tell her any more about my visit to Timeheart, which was sort of how the battle had come up in conversation in the first place, but she didn't push me about it. Soon I could pick out some ultrasonic bat cries up ahead.

Negotiating with the bats was - well, a little bit weird. They weren't big black vampire bats or anything - fairly small gray bats, mostly bug eaters though apparently they loved grabbing a bit of fruit when they could. The ones that I talked to seemed to get a kick out of the idea of working to harass and spy on vampires, though I couldn't really figure out how they had found out anything about the 'vampires and bats' stuff, since they couldn't really understand anything that people might say to them. And they seemed very sure that there wasn't much chance of the vamps being able to seduce them to the dark side, which I took at face value for the time being.

And I asked them about other night-living forest dwellers who might be able to help out. They told me about the foxes and the raccoons quickly enough, but there seemed to be something that their new bat buddies were keeping back from me, and I said as much to Liz in english. She frowned for a moment and said, "maybe it's about somebody or something that hunts them."

"Ohh," I agreed, and thought about it. Was about to ask the bats themselves, until I got a notion. ^Okay, thanks for this, guys,^ I just said in bat speak. ^You know what to do and when, right??^

^Yeah, you got it,^ the most talkative bat replied, and we headed off. I was a little distracted, wondering whether I should try the foxes or raccoons first, or follow my idea with the bat hunters, and was very taken by surprise when Liz suddenly stepped around in front of me, facing back, with her arms spread a little. I couldn't stop walking in time, so we nearly collided in an unexpected embrace, (unexpected by me, at least,) and her hands were on my shoulder and at the back of my neck, pulling my head down so that she could kiss me. It was... I've kissed a girl before, but now I don't think that I'd ever done it right until that night. Liz's moves were sweet and a touch naive, but she was definitely a talented kisser, and she smelled ever so faintly of delicate roses and orange oil.

I was just about to return the kiss, pull her even tighter to me, but a couple of annoying scruples got in the way, and then Liz pulled back a bit herself. Letting her go, and watching the way her dark hair fell across part of her face in the moonlight, was hard and the regret tugged at my chest and my guts. "Why, umm, why did you do that?" I blurted out.

"Umm... just on an impulse I guess," Liz admitted, sounding faintly embarrassed about throwing herself at me, (or putting herself where I was throwing myself, or something like that.) "If, umm, if you don't like me like that, then it's okay, but I do think that you're - well, you're amazing, Max, and I guess that I thought..."

"I - I can't do this now," I said, hating the words as they came out of me. "I mean - it's... it's not that I don't like you, Liz - quite the opposite." Our eyes met, and I couldn't help but smile slightly. Wondered if she could see the expression. "But - well, I - my top priority right now has to be protection, keeping you safe from the vampires or anything else. And not..."

"I, umm, I get it," Liz agreed. "Kind of a noble bodyguard thing."

"Yeah, maybe a little," I admitted. "And - well, there's a time for everything. I - I couldn't take it if... if you got hurt or even - if something happened to you because I couldn't wait to..." To hold you in my arms like that again, to kiss you and feel your lips against mine...

"Okay, yeah -- I can live with that," Liz said, and started walking down the path again. I followed, and her fingers brushed against mine - not an obviously affectionate movement, more like a reassuring thing. 'See, I'm still right here, and I'm safe for now.' "But - but when that darn book of yours says that I'm not in danger anymore, that you're off the case..."

Couldn't help but laugh at the way she was pushing the point. "We'll - we'll see where things lead when that happens."

"Okay. Where to next??"

"Umm, uh - I think that I want to find some owls."

"Owls?" There was a silent pause. "Right - they're tough, good birds... and they hunt bats." She sighed. "Are you sure that it's a good idea to recruit both??"

"Yeah, I think it'll be okay," I said. "I'm not getting involved in the food pyramid here, just asking for a few favors. This won't be the last time it comes up tonight, I think."

"Oh, no??"

"Nah." I sighed. "Want to pay a visit to the foxes and the raccoons too - probably a raccoon is big enough that a fox wouldn't catch one of 'em often, but I'd guess it happens occasionally."

"Yeah." Liz sighed. "Do owls and foxes sometimes tussle as rivals?"

"Umm, never thought of that. Great, one more possible complication."

-----------

When we got back to the camp it was late, the fire was out, and most of the rest of the gang were back into their tents. Michael was still sitting on one of the logs outside the campfire. "You don't have to keep up a watch all night, you know," I said.

"Yeah, I know," he agreed. "Got a bit of a... well, it's a worrying sensation. Are you *sure* that there's nothing to worry about on your sensor wizardry?"

"Um, yeah." And then, with a flash of panic, I realized that I hadn't reviewed the running parameters of that particular working since Liz and I left on the nature hike. "Darn it all, the range has been slipping down. Just a sec." Taking a deep breath, I pushed the wizardry back out over more of the forest around us. "Oh-kay... I've got two bogeys out about two and a half miles from here - nope, they're bandits, I always get those confused."

"What's the difference again?" Liz asked.

"Bogey is a mystery - could be a friend, an enemy, or a neutral," Michael said in a low voice. He used to get on my case when I got into a habit of using 'bogeys' for dark creatures. "Bandits are definitely enemy... just two??"

"Yeah, as far as I can tell," I muttered. "Why don't they have more of the pack up here, or clan or whatever the term is for the whole group? And why are they staying so far away? Have to know that we're here by now."

"Maybe they're trying to keep us on edge," Michael muttered. "Tire us out by making us wait for an attack, and then come in not long before dawn. Oh, and it's definitely a Pack of vampires."

"That'd be a suicide strike, unless they know of somewhere they can take cover from the sunlight, right?" Liz asked, staying clear of the terminology thread.

"There are caves not far from here," I reminded her. "Of course, if they tried to hole up there it might be possible for us to actually chase them there and figure out some wizardry that could actually kill 'em."

"I think that probably a 'suicide strike' is a distinct possibility," Michael muttered, and I scowled at him in the darkness and the vague flashlight reflections.

"Okay, then what's our strategy?" Liz replied.

"We don't let them stress us out too much for now," I said. "Set up a watch schedule and let everybody else sleep."

"Non-wizards should take watch shifts too," Liz pressed, and I sighed. "So that you guys can be more rested."

"Maybe, but not you," I said, and Liz actually stuck her tongue out at me. "The whole point is to make sure that you're safe. You sitting out in the open while everybody else is sleeping doesn't look very safe too me."

*I'm not sure that Alex or Maria would be nearly as effective on watch as we would be,* Michael added in the speech, whispered casually. *They can't use detection spells to be aware of trouble before it shows up.*

"Hey, I heard that!" Liz insisted. "Forget that everybody alive knows your secret speech?" To a certain extent, that was true, but I was finding it a bit odd how quickly Liz seemed to be getting used to hearing the speech. I'd have to remember that I couldn't use it to confuse her or keep secrets.

In the end, we sorted out a compromise. Michael, Alex, Maria, and I would each sit a watch shift - Isabel wouldn't be on formal watch because as Liz's roommate, she was in essence the last line of defense, and I felt more comfortable having her be as close to Liz as possible until sunrise. While Alex or Maria was on watch, they'd be using a sort of extension wizardry that allowed one of us to keep up the proximity warning as we slept - I could power a wizardry like that all through the night, easily enough, but I couldn't really spare the concentration to be aware of the results and get any rest at the same time, because it was more complicated than the simple alerts I had used on Liz that first night. So whoever was staying up would both keep watch with their human senses, and help monitor the detection spell results. If a vampire was getting within a half-mile of our campsite or so, I knew that would probably wake me up even out of a deep sleep, but there might be some other kind of threat that I couldn't anticipate as easily.

But most of the shifts passed without incident. As it happened, I had ended up with the last shift - actually, I'd nearly insisted on it, because of Michael's prediction that the attack would likely come at the end of the night. But the vampire telltales on my detector had retreated far enough back that I didn't want to waste the energy of stretching far enough to keep a clear lock on them. The pre-dawn hours were cold, so I started moving around the area, gathering some more wood for a breakfast fire - and nearly tripped on a cat. "Oh, hey there Maowah," I said out loud. "How's it going??"

*Not too bad. Been a long day and night for me. As soon as the sun comes up, I'm probably gonna go find someplace nice and warm to stretch out.*

I chuckled, and sat down on a flat rock not far away from the girls' tents. *Have you been on your feet ever since - umm, this afternoon?*

*Pretty much - caught a catnap here and there.* He let out a soft miaou, which sounded oddly like a feline laugh. *Figured that I might as well keep an eye on the strings.*

*Hey, how does that work anyway?* I asked, suddenly interested. (Made sure not to get distracted enough to let the detector spell slip, though.) *I mean, there's a note in the manual that cats can see quantum strings - and that's why cat wizards are used as technicians for the big public worldgates and what-have-you. Because the entire key to the way they work is based on string theory, so they can perceive directly what human beings have to understand as a matter of somewhat uncertain theory.* Maowah nodded at me, his eyes shining in the dim starlight. (The closest really established worldgate to Roswell is in one of the big finance buildings in Albuquerque, recently nicknamed 'The Left Turn.' Work that one out for yourself.) *But - well, gates aren't the only thing made up of strings as I understand it. All matter, all energy, all forces, wizardry and the other great arts and powers can all be reduced to the effects and operations of uncounted trillions of trillions of microscopic strings. How - how can you make any sense of stuff like that? And - and how is it that cats can see what the best scientific equipment that humans can build can't even prove is there, anyway??*

*Well, you know how it is with physicists and cats, right?* Maowah replied. *Sometimes, they can't even decide if we're alive or dead, right?* I shook my head at the Schroedinger joke. *Okay, well... frankly, the trouble with human science is that they're trying to get down to the nuts and bolts of what makes up their universe in such a... a concrete, grounded way. Which makes some sense - it's hard to build a society out of something more subjective because everybody's subjective senses are going to be different. But...* He broke off at this point and stretched his back out. *A cat's sense of the strings is more metaphysical than physical, I guess... something like the way that danger sense or telepathy are portrayed in your books and TV shows. We're made up of the strings, and all strings are connected with each other, after all. Why shouldn't we be able to sense important changes or distinctions in the nearby strings? It's not something that I'm always paying attention to, and I never really see that many at a time - just an impression of a pattern, or something like that. Very hard to describe. And yes, it works on more than gates, although for some cats that's the most important application. Sensing matter through strings isn't generally useful, not when you can see it directly, but...*

*Okay, well thanks,* I told him. *Don't expect that the vampires are going to be able to magically 'transit' in or use some other string effect, but you never know.* I groaned. *And whatever they're doing, it looks like they'll be doing it now. Those two have met up with a friend, and they're incoming.*

*Right. I'll round up the troops.* I thought about that. The vampires were still well away, around a mile and a half and not moving THAT fast, but I was starting to get paranoid of whatever tricks they might have up their sleeve, so I let Maowah catcall his head off. Soon, not only Michael and Isabel were out of their tents, but Liz and our other human friends. (At this point, I wanted Liz where we could all see her, and also where any vampire would need to get past somebody to get to her. Suddenly, just around the one-mile distant mark, (too close to be coincidence,) my three 'bandit signals' just vanished. "Uh-oh. Maybe they have some way to cloak themselves against detection magic for a short time??" I said.

"Or the ability to project fake impressions of themselves into detection magic," Michael suggested. "Maybe they were never even coming in, just retreating back to town, and using this trick to upset and confuse us."

I thought about that possibility, and discounted it, since I didn't see any place that petty harassment like that fit into the worst-case scenario. The only plausible way to proceed was to assume that this was a serious attempt on Liz's life - that seemed certain. But I couldn't think of what to do.

"What do your animal friends say, Max?" Liz prompted, and I kicked myself for not thinking of that one myself. Called out an inquiry in bat language, but there was no reply. Tried again, a little louder, not actually a question so much as a 'hey I'm over here' that one of the bat flock would use to signal to another - and after maybe thirty seconds heard something, so I asked again.

"Yeah, they can hear three not-quite-people moving through the brush pretty quick. The vampires might be able to hide from wizardry, but they're not using anything like a full undetectibility routine. Once they're close we'll probably be able to see them and hear them ourselves."

"Can you be sure that the three that the bats hear are the vampires, Max?" Isabel asked nervously. I couldn't, at that, but it seemed to be the best thing to presume, in the absence of any other data. Looked over at Maowah, suddenly very glad of his string sensing abilities, if they could make him an early warning system for anything unexpected. Michael had used a prepared wizardry to cast a fairly bright light in the middle of the campsite, about four and a half feet above the campfire pit, shining like moonlight except not quite as bright, and Isabel had her rowan wand that also shone with its borrowed moonlight. Whatever would happen, I hoped that we were ready for it.

Bat chitters. ^They're coming they're coming they're coming...^ I wanted to know if Isabel and Michael heard that too, but didn't want to look away. So I muttered something out loud, can't remember what, like 'be on your guard.' Moved towards the direction that the bat cries had come from, and I thought I could hear something else moving between the trees too. Michael came around too, to back me up, and Isabel took up a position exactly opposite us, in case there was a sudden attack from the rear. Alex and Maria shot some grumpy looks at each other and spread out to take lookout positions at the sides.

And then a voice rang out from maybe a hundred or two hundred feet away, a voice using the words of the speech, but with a slightly less familiar accent and inflection - a pattern of twisting the true words to less than noble ends that I had heard before only a few times. Couldn't make out all of the words, but it was something along the lines of *What the living and breathing hell, you mangy little cur? I should - I swear once I get you off, there ain't no pain great enough to...*

Michael snickered, and I got a feeling about what had happened. One of the friendly foxes had actually attacked a vampire. Just about that moment, one hostile signature popped back onto my detection spell - whatever dark borrowed wizardry (or some other kind of trick) he'd been using to hide had been disrupted. All of a sudden, I had a thought, and spoke up before I could honestly say that I'd reviewed it. *We know that you're out there, even if you're trying to hide from my arts,* I said. *We're well prepared, we have friends out here as you've seen, and we've defended our own against more than three of you before, even without animal h...*

**HEY!** Michael's word came to me in nothing more than a thought. **What're you trying to do? We can take them now, easily. And won't Liz's chances be better now than if they go back to their boss... assuming that the boss won't kill them for failing, which I think only really happens in bad TV shows.**

I had to admit that I wasn't sure about that. Part of it was that I just wanted to save the fox's life, since he'd bravely (and a little foolishly) charged to the attack and given away the vampire's presence. I wasn't sure that leading an attack would be decisive enough to help him - or her. But also... **If they lose three here tonight, then maybe they'd just be LESS willing to commit all their forces to a bit attack later, when we can sick the trees on 'em. But if we send them back, it would be an insult to the whole group and then they're sure to attack en mass tomorrow. Maybe. I hope.**

*I... I think that you're scared,* the vampire replied. *You wouldn't have offered to let us go alive if you were that strong. Plus, I don't think that you really know where any of us are but me.*

*Yeah, but I will if you make a move,* I shot back. *We can wait here all day - and it's pretty obvious that you couldn't.*

*Stupid little wizard. Bluffing like that won't... ahh!!"

I wasn't sure what had happened there. Suddenly Isabel called out "Incoming!" and I looked over my shoulder. A vampire had indeed circled around to come at us from the flank, and she was whipping it with moon fire. That vampire had a gun of some sort, and he took a shot at Liz - my heart stopped, but the bullet bounced off of her and whizzed past me into the trees. Yikes. A little bit too close, but I was glad that someone had cast a shield around her. That was good thinking. And then something else occurred to me.

If one vampire could get his hands on a gun, then probably they all could. And stepping into the clearing to aim and fire was stupid, compared to... *Michael! What if one of the others...*

*Yeah, I'm on it,* Michael said. *We need a better detection method - a total motion detector field, forty foot range as well. You with me??*

*I've got the power if you've got the words.* Michael nodded, and I whispered a power transfer spell - not the 'give it everything you've got' version. I mean, I trust Michael, but still this situation didn't seem to really call for it. I felt the link take, and then Michael started with a longer spell, asking the nearby universe to be told about anything solid that was moving. Because we were linked, I could pick up on the results of the spell, and it was really hard to orient at first - tree branches shaking in the wind, Isabel and Maria struggling physically with a vampire on the other side of the camp, while Alex circled nervously around, probably not sure how to help his girl. Nothing much was coming from Liz, but that was probably good - she was sitting tight inside her protective field, waiting for it to be over. And out in the forest...

Well, the first thing I really noticed out there was a surprisingly big knot of movement and action, but after a moment I realized that it wasn't anything we needed to worry about - that was where the first vampire and the fox was, though by themselves they couldn't account for all of that activity. And one other humanoid shape, not far, moving silently between the trees and stretching limbs out in front of him...

There was no time to speak another spell. I brought out my steel rod and tried to aim it just right. Poured all of the heat that I could through that little tool, with almost no visible light. And then there was another outburst of cursing in the woods, as the humanoid shape in the motion detector spell tossed something away in a pained motion...

And just then Michael let the motion detector drop again, leaping into the forest himself. I hesitated a moment before following myself - even if this vampire had lost his gun, he'd have a lot of tricks up his sleeve and I wasn't sure if Michael would be a match for him. Sure enough, just as we got amongst the trees there was a bit of a whizzing sound, and Michael grunted in pain and flopped heavily to the dirt. Panicking only a little, I checked my detector spell, then relaxed slightly in puzzlement. All three vampire signals were showing up - at least for a moment. One died away inside the camp - not vanishing, but slowly ebbing away to nothing, as an exclamation of surprise and a distinctive cheer from Maria sounded behind me. The other two - the one who had just thrown something at Michael and the one who had run into fox trouble, were in full-pelt retreat, and I wasn't about to stop them this time.

I had a healer's work to do now, I rather suspected.

The morning twilight was starting to make its presence known once all of that was sorted out, in fact. Michael had gotten a ninja throwing star in his side, between two of the lower ribs - not an authentic Japanese one I mean - probably it had been bought or stolen from a store back in Roswell, or maybe another town nearby, but it was fairly well weighted for throwing, and extremely sharp. Wonder what had convinced the vampire to carry one along, possibly just a 'cool factor.' It had worked to slow Michael down, but he hadn't really been badly hurt.

And there were foxes to work on too. A number of others from the pack had rushed the vampire in an attempt to save one of their own... one had had his back broken, and several others had bad bleeding wounds or broken bones or both, but I was determined to help as many of them as I could, since they'd gotten themselves hurt for my sake and Liz's. None of the rest of the campers, (who weren't exactly happy by the end of the night,) had taken any worse wounds than scrapes or bruises, and Alex had managed to successfully stab a tree branch into a vampire's heart, while Maria and Isabel were both grappling with it and holding it mostly harmless.

"I wonder if the other two were able to drive back to town in time to avoid the sunlight, or what else happened to them," Isabel said, letting Alex put a band-aid from his first aid kit on her leg just below the knee, instead of having me cure the wound. (I was pretty healed out by that point, to tell the truth.)

"I'm not too sure how much it matters, to be honest," I admitted. "Just hope that today will be long enough for all of us to recover from that little fight - and that the next time vampires come, they attack in sufficient numbers that we can call the trees."

"I don't think that last one should be a problem," Michael said, smiling slightly. "And sorry if talking back upset your plan - I'm not sure if the vampires can tell if we're speaking mind to mind, but I made you break off when you were..."

"It's okay," I admitted. "Things probably worked out at least as well this way than they would have if you'd left me alone." Most of the group started chortling over that, and I rolled my eyes.

"Okay, umm... well, I guess all of you brave and talented wizards need a nice big breakfast to recover some of the energy you spent?" Liz said, sighing just a little bit. "As well as good friends who came leaping to my defense."

"Yeah, breakfast!" Michael chimed in. "But don't groan like you're gonna have to do all of the cooking, Parker. I mix up a mean pancake batter."

"Yeah, he actually does," Isabel agreed with a trace of respect. "Every so often he just sort of lets himself into our house and cooks breakfast for everybody. I think my parents even look forward to it a little."

"Have we got any of those little sausages?" Alex asked.

"Check in the cooler with the freezer packs," I said. "We should probably use everything in it either for breakfast or lunch - and two people drive into town to do a little more shopping before dinner." I tried to catch Liz's eyes, hoping that we'd get a chance to spend a little more alone time that way, but she had half disappeared into Isabel's tent looking for something. So I didn't get eye contact, but managed to see quite a decent glimpse of her butt with the shorts she'd been wearing as pajama bottoms stretched tightly across it. Maria kinda caught me looking too. Oh boy.

Breakfast was pretty fun, and as we finished up Maria started talking about swimming - if there was anyplace we could go to take a dip, which there was, a few minute's walk away, and then trying to persuade Liz and Michael to come with her. Why she was picking on Michael I wasn't quite sure, though I had my suspicions. Maybe Liz and I weren't the only nascent love connection forming out here in the forest. I remembered all the stuff that Michael had been saying on the morning of the shooting, about how a girl like Maria would never even look at him. Maybe he was being a bit too hard on himself...

"So, are you in the mood for a dip too, Max?" Liz asked with a big grin.

Oh boy. Liz in a bathing suit, fun in the water. I thought about that, and about not getting distracted from duty. "Umm, not a big fan of the forest swimming hole, and I should probably..."

"Come on, why not?" Liz's smile was definitely teasing me. "You can't protect me if you're not even there."

Oh, boy. "But, well, you're not in much danger as long as it's daylight, and Michael will be there, and I need to..."

"Help clean up the breakfast dishes," Isabel supplied smoothly, and I nodded a bit too enthusiastically.

"Yeah, that!"

"Alright." And Isabel brought over a plastic tub of dirty pans and dishes. "Which you can best do by tagging along with the swimmers, so you can fill this up with water, heat it up with a little wizardry, and rinse each thing out in the river again when you're done with it."

Alex started laughing first. I sighed, shook my head, and caught Liz's eye. She winked at me. I guess I've got no choice, now.

Umm... thank you, Isabel. Really.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	6. Chapter 6

"Tag, you're it!" With a soft peal of laughter, Liz backed away from Michael, who she had just slapped on the arm, and managed to butterfly-kick pretty well out of his range in a split second. My best friend hesitated for a moment, then looked around for Maria, probably hoping that she'd prove to be an easier catch than tagging Liz back. It was not to be. Probably because the two girls had been good friends for so long, Maria had realized what Liz was up to before Michael did, and was well out of his range as well. Growling softly to himself, Michael set his sights on Liz again, who seemed to be a bit less strong of a swimmer overall, and was quickly catching up to her. I laughed softly at the situation.

Michael nearly broke off the chase to glare at me, which enabled Liz to get some headway back. I was sitting on the bank of the river at this point, scrubbing breakfast dishes in river water that I had warmed up using a small wizardry, and soaped up the very old-fashioned way, using a very tiny bottle of detergent. Once everything was clean, I'd dump the used water out down a drain marked for that purpose, and fill the tub up again to rinse everything out. Wasn't paying that much attention to the dishes at the moment though, I admit, between watching the various friends of mine swimming, and keeping a little bit of a guard up just in case Michael should try a wizardry of his own to shove me into the water with my clothes still on.

At least the tag stuff put the girls in relatively deep water, which meant that the little bikini swimsuits that they were wearing, and the bare skin the suits showed off, weren't immediately visible - and it also put them far away from the shore and me. There was a part of me that didn't think either of those were good, but - well, Liz in particularly was having a strongly distracting effect on me lately, (though Maria was also an attractive girl, but our polarities didn't seem to match the same way.) And though I didn't really need to keep on the watch for creatures of the night terribly hard just at the moment, somewhere deep down I still wasn't sure I was ready for what I wanted and felt when I looked at Liz. Especially what I wanted when I looked at that much of her.

So I watched the game of tag proceed out in the deeper water, and then bent over and focused as much attention as I could on the dishes when the three of them came back in, and started chatting and playing near the shore. Suddenly, just after I'd finished filling my dishpan up with the rinsing water, somebody called my name and automatically I looked up. There was Liz, right in front of me, with the water's edge right around her waist. Her long hair was partly wet, and there was something especially alluring about the way she looked right at that moment. I swallowed hard. "Yeah, what is it?"

She giggled softly, and somehow I got the impression that Liz hadn't had anything particular in mind to say to me - she had just spoken out because she wanted me to look up and see her, because she was disappointed that I'd been ignoring her. (I hadn't been actually, I think, but I probably looked like I was.) "Umm... just wondered if you had anything in mind for after we got back to camp. What to, umm, to do with the rest of the morning you know, before lunch."

"Hmm." I thought about that one. "Maybe we could start by trying to figure out what to do for lunch and helping to get it ready. Unless Isabel and Alex are already working on that, at least."

"Hmm... maybe," Liz admitted. "Or, oh! Are you any good at shooting?"

That question seemed more than a little off topic, but I tried to roll with it. "Not, umm, not really - I've never tried holding a firearm or anything like that - they're way too deadly, and I don't like having to rely on weapons like that. With my arts, I guess I don't have to. I do okay with 'shooting' the steel rods and that kind of thing, but... why do you ask?"

"Have you ever tried something like that blaster of Isabel's, the one that she gave me?" Ohh, now I saw where this was going. "I, well, I feel pretty stupid that when the vampires came last night, I didn't even think of using that for most of the fight, I just kind of stood around and - well, and waited for other people to save me. And when I did remember it and tried to take a shot, I only blew a small hole in a tree, which can't be good considering that we're counting on them to save me in the end. It WAS other people who beat the vampires last night - wizards, judo white-belt best friends, even plucky boyfriends." She paused for just a second. "Not *my* boyfriend, I mean, since we've established that I don't have one. Alex, who's Isabel's boyfriend."

Hmm... dropping any hints, are we Miss Parker? "Well, umm, I don't know how much help I'll be with actually learning to shoot a blaster well, but if you want me to come and keep you company while you try it out, yeah, I'm up for that." Paused a moment and fished vaguely in the dishpan as if anything really needed any more help getting rinsed out by this point. "One thing I should be able to help with, that thing runs on a fluorine hydride based fuel cell, and there really isn't a recharge attachment on the planet that I know of. But whatever juice you use up for practice shooting, I should be able to infuse back into it."

"Yet another reason a wizard is handy to have around," Liz purred. "Okay - see you back there in ten? I want to swim out to the far shore and back. Good exercise."

"Alright, I'll be there," I said, and gaped at how suddenly she took off, her smooth and bare legs flashing above the water in strong kicks. Hmm... in the water, it wasn't at all obvious just how short she was, not that she's a midget or anything. (Five foot two or so, but no eyes of blue, so the song doesn't fit for her.) Guess there just aren't any of the usual reference points to judge against in the water.

So, it was more like fifteen minutes before Liz had come back to camp, finished drying herself off, changed into something a bit more modest, (just a bit - shorts, hiking shoes, and a tank top, heheh,) and found the blaster again. "Okay," she said, heading up to where I was waiting around the campfire pit. "Where should we go, any ideas??"

"Hmm," I thought out loud. "Should be somewhere not too far away, but with enough distance that you're not likely to hurt one of our friends by accident - or a friendly forest denizen." Considered longer. "I think I know a place." Started leading the way through the woods, and after a moment Liz shrugged and followed. "So, are Michael and Maria still having splashy fun?"

"They were when I left," she said. "I always thought Michael was very brusque and reserved, but he seems to be opening up some to both of us. And, well, I think that Maria sort of has a crush on him, though she hasn't actually admitted that much. It'd be interesting if they started something up."

"Yeah I guess," I muttered, though I wasn't that wild about the notion of Michael having something to distract him from the vampire danger. Couldn't help but wonder if that secret crush was secretly requited - and what a romantic relationship between them might be like for their friends - the fiery hurricane girl and the reserved boy of stone. Hmm... maybe better not to think on that too much, it was borrowing trouble.

"Okay, I guess that we need a new topic," Liz muttered. "Were you Jen Williamson's' boyfriend, last fall before she moved away from town?" Surprised, I turned to look at her - and bonked my head into a thick tree branch that I should have known to duck away from. "Oops."

"No, I'll be fine," I muttered. "Not even a goose bump. Okay, Jen - why do you ask? I mean, just from being able to put her name and mine together..."

"There was talk going around, at the time," Liz admitted. "The two of you had been seen around together. But I didn't really get any kind of 'official' word as it were, so I thought I'd ask at the source."

"Fair enough," I admitted. Thought of Jen - a slightly petite girl my own age with straight blond hair, and a sarcastic worldly-wise attitude that I'd never been sure where she'd gotten living here in Roswell. "Well, we were friends, and fooled around a bit, and then went out on a few dates - yes, I realize that traditionally those are supposed to go in a different order."

"Becoming friends after going out on a date?" Liz teased.

"Well, sometimes people do," I said. "Actually, I meant fooling around after going out on a date." Liz nodded. "And we talked about, well, about making it exclusive or something like that, but neither of us really seemed to be that interested in it. Then she found out she was going to have to leave for North Carolina. So, I guess I'd say that I wasn't her boyfriend, though there might be an argument to be made based on how many dates we'd been out on in a row."

"Alright," Liz said. "Do you still miss her?"

"Occasionally, but not much," I admitted. "I did, right after she left, but - well, life goes on, you know? Last I heard, she was dating this kid who was shooting a low-budget TV show."

"Okay," Liz said. "Ooh, is that where we're going?" She pointed up ahead and smiled.

It was still a few minutes after that before we actually got where we were going - a rocky canyon where the trees of the forest mostly hadn't been able to make any headway. "So, any idea what kind of targets you want to shoot at?" I asked. "Preferably nothing alive, it kind of goes against the wizard's constitution."

"Umm, how about that piece of dead wood up there?" Sure enough, there was a rotting lump of a fallen tree that was balanced up on a rocky ledge maybe sixty feet away - probably somebody had put it up there on purpose, since I didn't see how the wind could have landed it there. I nodded, and Liz brought out the blaster, trying to get accustomed to its shape and size.

The thing didn't really look like a gun - I'm not sure if Liz would have found it any easier to work with if it did or not. (Probably not, after getting shot just a week or so ago, come to think of it.) There was a big handle that was maybe two inches wide, not quite an inch thick, and four inches or so high, which made it fairly comfortable to fit inside your hand, and then the part that the ion blasts actually shot out of was slightly wider and thicker, two inches or so high itself. You don't need a long barrel to accelerate ions, not with the Sperennian technology - so it just didn't have one. Liz shrugged nervously, futzed with one of the settings, tried to 'sight' above the top of the blaster, lowered it slightly to a level where it was easier to hold, and touched the trigger.

BANG! The hunk of wood exploded into several pieces and a lot of splintery fragments. Liz turned to stare at me, in awe of what she'd managed to accomplish. "Not bad," I said as calmly as I could. "You amped it up to the highest intensity first, right??"

"Yeah, I wanted to be sure that it would do something," she said slowly, and started to laugh at that. Then she checked the reading. "Ooh, battery's down past three quarters already."

Liz practiced a little more with the blaster, targeting rocks and a few less solid targets that we could find in the canyon, experimenting with the different intensity levels, and I topped the battery up a few times, which was starting to get exhausting. Finally I convinced Liz that she was about as good with her new toy as she was likely to get today, and we walked back to camp, just in time for the barbecue burgers Isabel and Alex fixed up for lunch - great grub, even if Isabel did nag me into putting more green stuff on mine than I really like. Sister are good at that sort of thing, and it is important that I take care of myself, for my own sake and the sake of my work, even if it's more fun to eat junk.

Michael and Maria showed up when I was finishing up my second burger, no longer wet, and said that they'd gone out for a walk after swimming. Outwardly, everybody pretty much took this at face value, but Maria seemed to be flushed in the face more than a bit of exercise could easily account for, and Michael had a bit too much of a smile in his usual poker face. Well, if Liz and I could kiss, (though we hadn't done that much,) then I couldn't really raise a fuss about anything that Michael and Maria chose to do - at least, not while the sun was out.

As Michael and Maria ate, we talked about what was up next for the rest of the day. Liz wanted to go back into town briefly, and pick up a bit of homework to tackle tomorrow, so it was agreed that I'd drive her in and we'd both hit the grocery store. Aside from that, nobody had any really good ideas.

"We could play capture the flag out here in the woods or something," Alex suggested. "Girls against guys or something."

"Oh, man, I knew this would happen if I let you guys hang out together," Isabel complained. "All of a sudden, he's talking about war games."

"Hey, come on," Alex said. "I've been something of a capture the flag enthusiast for years, it's not like I'm being influenced unduly, except that now there are a few other people around who I thought might appreciate the idea." He grinned briefly. "Of course, if you think that you'd be at a disadvantage against us, then maybe we could play mixed teams or something..."

"HEY!" Isabel and Maria called out at the same time, while Liz seemed to shoot a wink over at Alex. "I'm not afraid of facing off against you, my dear," Isabel said. "Just unutterably bored by the notion."

"Well, I'd be up for it, I think," Maria replied. "Except, since you've got two wizzes to our one, assuming she plays, so we'd have to put those powers off the table."

"Yeah, of course," I agreed. "Wouldn't use wizardry in a game, unless that was pretty much the whole point, as a training exercise to increase control of my powers. Would be a waste of the energy otherwise, and Capture the Flag is draining enough without using magic on it."

"I'll go," Michael said, "and I think that Max is interested. How about you, Parker??"

"Well, if everybody thinks that it's *safe*." She stared right at me as she said this.

"I don't think that we need to worry too much, during the daylight," Isabel put in. "I'll do my best to keep an eye on you, and Max can lay some warning wizardries. But we don't need to make this feel like protective custody for you, just to be careful."

"So you're playing too?" Liz said, turning her head to smile innocently at Isabel. Isabel muttered a few words in the speech that were not entirely called for, though not bad enough as to conjure up immediate consequences.

"Wait a second," I pointed out. "What about the shopping?"

"You can do that later," Michael said. Probably he wanted to capitalize on the momentum that the game discussion had generated. If we gave Isabel a chance, she might find some way to squirm back out of playing. "The stores will be open until seven at least, on a saturday night."

"Yeah, let's start right now," Alex said. Like everyone else, he was taking my sister's participation as an accomplished fact at this point. (Had Liz brought up the safety angle just to inveigle her in?) "We can use those two paths stretching away from camp as barriers, since they're nearly in opposite directions. Which side do the girls want?"

"That way," Maria said, pointing away from the water.

"And what do we use as flags?"

Liz immediately rushed towards my tent, and before I could cut her off she had snuck in, and emerged in a moment with a clean pair of white boxers from my bag. "This is the guy's flag, which they have to get back from us," she declared proudly.

"Oh, boy," Isabel muttered, rolling her eyes. "Come on, if you guys take something that's really expensive of mine and get dirt and dust trodden into it..."

We didn't end up taking anything of Isabel's for the girls' flag, and Michael was giving me the head nod that he thinks he's discreet to go and give Liz a taste of her own medicine. I didn't have quite the nerve to go for actual lacy underthings, though, so settled for a pair of fuzzy blue and white checkered pajama shorts - and ended up checking with Liz that they were okay to take. She said that she didn't mind, and that I could probably use a wizardry to clean them off or repair them if I had to, and with that, we split up into groups to start the game.

It was pretty clear from the start that Maria had managed to get a tactical advantage over us with the way the territory had been determined. The river was a nearly impassible barrier, and unless we put our flag headquarters beyond it, (which would force us to cross the stream both ways in an attempt to retrieve our flag from girl HQ,) then there was a fairly definite limit of how far our base could be from the border onto girl territory. They would have no such limits. Alex apologized for setting us up in this fix, since he'd set the border and offered the girls pick of their territory.

"Yeah, it's a blunder, but an understandable one," Michael muttered. "I think that under the circumstances we want to be as far away, not just from the border, but from camp as we can be."

"That'll be to the north and northeast, then," I said. "The southwest border path ends up at the river's edge, so all we've got is a narrowing wedge of territory there." So we hurried northeast, found a good spot deep in a thick grove of trees, and tied the flag high enough that probably only Isabel would be able to reach it, and even she'd need to jump. Discussed a little strategy, and then Michael realized that the girls were calling for us back at the camp clearing and heading this way along the border path - we sorted out a few things and then headed off via a circuitous route to meet somebody.

"Okay, our HQ is set up," Liz said. "Once the game starts, nobody is allowed to touch the opposing team's flag. If you're tagged out in enemy territory, then you have to head back to the campfire and wait five minutes before re-entering play. That sound good?" I nodded, so did Alex, and Michael kind of grunted. "Do we disclose HQ locations or not??"

I hadn't really thought about that, but tugged gently on Alex's arm before he replied too soon and pulled the guys back into a huddle. "This will change the whole character of the game, so we'd better be sure of our answer. If we each know each other's HQs, then it'll be a fairly straightforward game of decisive strikes into each other's territory, maybe some secret approaches from behind, and so on. If not, then there'll be a lot more slow scouting work, each group trying to find the other flag first."

"Yeah, good point," Michael said. "And they'd have less territory that they have to search looking than we'll probably have to go through."

"That makes sense," Alex said. "I'd go for disclosure."

So we told the girls that, and for a second it looked like Isabel was going to argue the point and say that we didn't get to decide on our own - probably she'd recognized the advantage that her side would have with secret HQs. Liz mentioned that it was fair for us to decide, since they'd had first pick of territory, and so that was that.

The girls' HQ was about a quarter mile away from camp, not far from the road, and I knew that that could be a hard slog through enemy territory, but Michael and Alex seemed enthusiastic. As we split up again, I suggested that they try working together on an offensive, while I guarded the HQ.

"Heck yeah!" Michael agreed.

"Hmm." Alex considered that. "Is it wise to commit so many people into enemy territory, actually? If the girls get lucky and tag us both out, then it'll be three against one until the penalty period is up. And you can't defend against all possible approaches to HQ all by yourself Max."

"Good points," I admitted. A five-minute delay before the game began had been agreed on, so we didn't have too long to discuss strategy. "On the other hand, I'm not so sure that I'm comfortable being conservative - leaving two defenders and just one forward operative to attack with. Things are going to be tight no matter what, with only three on each team."

"Yeah." Michael considered that. "Still - like Alex said, if we kept two on defense and they sent two out on the attack - we'd have the tactical advantage of home territory and might be able to convert that into numerical superiority. I like the sound of that."

A moment of hesitation. "Okay. Or maybe we should all stay on defense, just to start with, assuming that they'll probably lead some sort of foray towards our HQ first off."

Alex grinned. "Yeah, that's the kind of trickiness it'll take to win things. And if they've thought of the same thing, then maybe we'll send two forward and take our changes, two against three."

And so it was settled. The five minute mark came, and a small wizardry that I'd left running in the campsite made a high-pitched whistling sound to signal that things were getting started. I crept behind a tree, not far from HQ, while Alex and Michael prepared themselves an ambush closer to the path.

Of course, I quickly realized that leading from the rear in these kind of circumstances was very stressful, because it was hard to tell what was going on - or even what wasn't going on, because things were very quiet to start with. I could have found out all kinds of things about the situation with a very simple wizardry, but that would have been against the rules - even if Isabel was unlikely to find out if she was sticking by the agreement. Doing the right thing can be so annoying.

Then there was a quiet scuffling from further up, and I could just make out Alex's voice: "Yeah, you better run!"

Then things were quieter again. "Hey, what's going on?" I called out, wondering if I could be heard without raising my voice more.

Michael showed up so suddenly that I was surprised I hadn't heard him coming through the trees until he was nearly there. "Not much. DeLuca tried to sneak through - we heard her, she heard us coming - and ducked back to the path."

"Hmm." Thought about that. "So do we go with operation break-stalemate now?"

"Yeah, actually," Michael said. "I'd rather have you with me, and stick Whitman on guard duty? Alright?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, coming along with him. Michael and I do understand each other pretty well by now.

-----------

"HAAHHIYIHAH!" Michael's scream managed to puzzle some of the girls as he charged into their HQ clearing, which was something to justify its existence I guess. As I watched, he sidestepped around Maria, making for the flag. But Isabel managed to get into position just a few feet away from his target, and I wasn't quite sure how he was going to avoid getting tagged out.

BAM. I wish I hadn't found out. Just as Isabel was reaching out to slap him, Michael's foot flew, making solid contact with my sister's shin. (We hadn't brought up whether that kind of tactic was fair game - looks like Michael made his own decision.) She half crumpled, and that was all of the distraction that Michael needed to detour around her and grab the flag. Isabel reached out for another attempted tag, but her fingertips were just a fraction of an inch away from making contact with his butt.

"Look out!" I called. Liz was behind Michael now, and there was no way he could avoid all three girls indefinitely - we both knew that. I really hoped that I wouldn't have had to warn him, thus betraying my own position here, but there'd been no way to assume that he'd realized she was there.

Michael just had enough time to wad the boxers into a very tight little ball and wing them over to me before he was tagged out. I reached out, caught the fabric, which had unfurled just a little, and took off running for the path as quickly as possible, knowing that the girls would be after me. (And as much fun as it sounded like, I couldn't let 'em catch me, darn.)

Dashing at full pelt through those trees was no fun. (I hoped that they wouldn't hold any of this stuff against us later.) I was focused on just one thing, getting to the path, at least for now. The girls probably wouldn't stop at the path, even though I'd have tag advantage beyond, since stopping me from bringing our flag back to HQ was their only hope by that point. I was tuning everything else out, so loud that Maria had to scream to actually get my attention.

"MAX! FORGET the stupid game for a MINUTE! Liz is in danger again, and maybe us too!!"

For about a moment I wondered if this were some deceptive tactic, but when I turned around to check, that possibility was discarded pretty quickly. Liz was maybe seven or eight yards behind me, with Maria not far beyond, but approaching both of them from the side was - I couldn't identify it immediately, but it did look dangerous. The outline was maybe three or four feet high and at least six feet long - not an upright biped, like humans - or vampires for that matter, not that I was worrying about them much in the daytime.

At first the only thing that occurred to me was to turn around, jog up to Liz and stand next to her, partially blocking the enemy's way to her. Yeah, very chivalrous and gallant, but not too helpful if that creature was as deadly as it looked. And because I'd been concentrating so hard on the game and trying to block my powers out so that I didn't use them accidentally, and also on account of the lactic acid built up in my muscles and the slightly dizzy feeling in my head from running so hard, I couldn't think of a single wizardry to help out in this situation.

Liz reached out and squeezed my hand with hers, and that actually seemed to help out a little bit. First things first, call for reinforcements. "Michael, Isabel! We've got a menace here, and you can help out with it even if you're tagged out..."

That was about as far as I got, since the 'menace' apparently decided to take no chances on letting my friends get there in time, and skittered quite close. I backed off, watching it and trying to think of a good force attack. It looked a lot like a giant insect, but I had come to the decision that it wasn't actually alive - the thing was a weird mix of electronics, metal, and wood - probably it was controlled by a system that included computer programs, clockwork gears, and dark sorceries. A different sending of the vampire's boss, the one that Valenti and River Dog had both mentioned??

Something occurred to me, and I gasped out a few words in the speech. Didn't have the copper disk that would normally be required for that spell, (pennies aren't pure enough copper anymore to fit the bill,) and so it took a lot more out of me than I'd expected, and I sagged against Liz's side. But the insect-construct's head snapped nearly off of its body, and I knew that some sort of important conduit in the neck had broken.

But it was still able to lurch towards us, with knife like feet flashing and heavy blunt claws opening and closing, as if they couldn't wait to crush human flesh. Liz screamed, and I might have whimpered unimpressively or something like that.

I saw Maria make a dash towards the bug, but then turn back - this wasn't anything that her judo would be too effective against, after all. Liz yelled again, in pain this time, and I felt a horrible pressure on my arm, as one of the claws caught it.

And then there was a huge sound, a gust of wind, and an odd orange-green light. Shook my head, trying to clear it, and I realized two things. One was that the bug was fifteen feet away, or at least the pieces of it were, some of them still feebly trying to move. The other was that Isabel had arrived, and she looked pissed off.

"Whew," I mumbled. "Liz, are you okay??"

"Umm, my leg is bleeding, but I think it's not too bad, she muttered, and patted me on the back. "Tag, you're out."

"Oh, come on, now," I muttered, feeling very under-appreciated. "That can't possibly count - the game was suspended as soon as bug face showed up, and we have to agree..."

"Let's just call the whole thing off," Maria grumped.

"...she says because we were winning," Alex called out from off near the path. Maria stuck her tongue out in that direction.

"Actually, as competitive as my spirit usually is, I think that letting things rest here is probably a good idea," Michael pointed out, arriving from the other way. "Whatever that thing was, it wouldn't have caused any of us nearly as much trouble if we'd been paying attention. Obviously *someone* thought that maybe he could sneak in a light asset and get Liz when none of us expected an attack - at high noon. And it nearly worked. We can't afford to let down our watch enough for capture the flag."

There was a disappointed murmur of agreement to Michael's remark. "Okay, so back to camp?" Liz asked.

"Not before I've fixed your leg," I told her firmly.

"And what about your arm?" I sighed, not having realized that she had spotted my own injury.

After I helped Liz sit down on a stump, just before I could bend down to examine the puncture, she reached out and kissed me firmly on the lips, in front of everybody. "Thank you," she stage-whispered. "My knight in faded blue-jeans, you saved me once again."

"Hey!" Isabel complained. We both turned to look at her. "Umm, not that I wanted the smooch from Liz, I mean, but... I'm the one who slew the beast over here, or something like that."

"Yeah, I know," Liz said. "But if Max hadn't been here, I'm afraid that you wouldn't have gotten here in time." Isabel frowned, but didn't argue the point. Myself, I was still struggling from feeling deliciously dizzy after the kiss, and that annoying voice in the back of my mind that was saying I needed to be more careful about letting her take advantage of situations like that.

"Okay, let's see." I pulled up Liz's own blue jeans enough to see the part that was bleeding. "You're right, it's not very deep or serious. In fact, I'd generally say that a wound this shallow doesn't need wizardry to heal - but you may need to move fast tonight, and it would be plenty sore by then, and the leg might not be bearing full weight..."

"Use your best judgment, Max," Liz told me. "You're my physician, and you're my guardian. *I trust you.*"

And just about everybody else there, including me, and Alex who had come close by now, reacted in shock and surprise. "What - what's wrong with that?" Liz asked Maria plaintively.

"I... I couldn't even tell what it was, I mean, well, not like it was..." she started.

"You used the speech," I said, quite surprised at the notion myself. It isn't that unusual for friends or family of Wizards to pick up the speech if they're exposed to it a lot, but it had only been days since Liz had been exposed to wizardry for the first time, as far as I knew. "I... how did you--"

"It, it just kind of slipped out," Liz said, and then reconsidered. "Come to think of it, I guess that you've used the words in front of me before, and my mind just sort of put them together when I wanted to reassure you." She sighed. "And I didn't mean to sidetrack the process. Either do your mojo or bandage me up and let's get back to camp, is my advice."

"Alright." I smiled nervously at Liz, said the very simple healing spell necessary, and let her lean on me as she walked. Things were quiet in camp when we got back, everybody feeling all too aware of the narrow shave that Liz had been through, and I felt guilty for having let things get that far. Isabel had even suggested that I put wards around Liz during the game, but I'd refused, because it would have been impossible to keep them up without knowing her location, and I hadn't wanted to do that since it would have affected my strategic moves in the game. Then again, I suppose that I could have put wards on the boundaries of this section of woods, and they'd have let me know when the golem, or whatever I should call it, approached without saying anything about anyone inside the wards. Hmm. Well, hindsight was in perfect focus as per usual - and I'd just have to remember that trick for a more appropriate time.

"Alright, so should we head into town for shopping now?" Liz asked me, after a few minutes. "You don't want me to be in town after the sun sets, but aside from that, is there any reason I need more than one wizard bodyguard?"

"Oh, right," I said, remembering the grocery trip that we'd agreed on. "Michael, Isabel, what do you think?"

"We'll be getting started on dinner with what supplies we have," Michael put in. "Don't drop your guard or let her out of your sight, and you'll be fine Maxwell." Michael chuckled very softly to himself over that.

"I'll write you a list of the things that we need," Isabel added, heading over to the icebox. I guess that answered the question of whether it was just going to be Liz and I heading into town together.

Neither of us said much for the start of the ride, and the silence got a bit awkward. "I feel like there are other questions I want to ask about you, Max, about what you were like before this wizard thing happened to you, but I'm not sure how to put it," Liz finally said.

"Oh, I was a boring kid," I put in. "Really shy, I always felt like I was peeking out from behind a tree looking at the other kids having fun."

"Aww," she said, and to my surprise there was nothing embarassing to me about her empathic reaction. "I guess I'd have been in the middle of the crowd trying to jump rope by myself or something, and wondering why everybody was looking at me."

That seemed odd. "You feel like you grew up with people looking at you? I mean, paying attention to you?"

"Well, maybe a bit. The Crashdown is a popular place - or at least it was, hasn't been doing quite so good the past two years or so, and everybody seems to know my parents. My first day in fifth grade, the teacher, Mrs Roberts, who I didn't realize that I'd ever met, told me how cute she thought my new haircut was."

"Ahh, yeah," I said. "Can see how that might tend to make you feel... claustrophobic or something."

"Or paranoid," she said, laughing. "So come on, just give me more details, don't worry about if you feel like they're trivial or something. What was your birthday party like when you turned seven?"

Somehow that specific made it easier for me to share. "Really sucked, actually... Isabel had like eight friends, and aside from Michael there was only one other guy who came for me. Eight was better, that was when they started organizing seperate parties for each of us."

"Oh, right, the twin thing," Liz said. "Sorry, I didn't clue in that that meant the same birthdays."

"It's okay," I assured her.

----------

"What else is on the list?" I asked Liz. She was just catching up to walk beside me as I pushed the big cart through the small grocery-variety store.

"Some cold stuff - rocky road ice cream and boneless chicken breasts... and sliced almonds. Do you know why she wanted those?"

"She's probably thinking of making granola for breakfast tomorrow or something," I admitted. "Well, this place doesn't have any other nuts than peanuts and walnuts I think - maybe we should hit the big T&C for the rest of this stuff?"

"Hmm... okay, yeah," Liz said after a long moment of thinking. "So you should probably head for the checkout."

"Right." I adjusted course appropriately, and Liz stayed in step with me. "What do you think that you'd have done this weekend if it hadn't been for all of this... crazy stuff?"

"Nothing too fun," she admitted, smiling slightly. "Working all day today at the cafe, and maybe doing research online for writing a better college application essay once that was done." She smiled slightly. "We've got a few girls working at the Crashdown this weekend who don't get shifts that often, because it isn't very often that Maria and I both take the whole weekend off."

"Oh, no wild Thelma and Louise style road trips out into the desert for you gals then?" I teased her. "Too bad."

"No, I don't think that would really be much fun," Liz admitted. "I love Maria lots, but... well, actually, it probably wouldn't be so bad being in a car with her for long hours at a stretch. Not something that we've ever tried I guess."

I nodded to accept that, and Liz walked ahead to start unloading the cart onto the checkout conveyor belt. "So what's your idea of fun... leaving aside camping out in the woods with one friend, one ex-friend, and three kids that you don't really know yet."

"Well, there's always walking around and going to a movie or a concert with one guy who I'd like to know a lot better." I looked up, and realized that Liz was unnecessarily bending down over the conveyor, which gave me just a bit of a peek down her tank top. (Yeah, I looked for a moment, I could hardly stop the reflex movement.) And she looked at me to make sure that I was looking at her. "And then, well, I'm such a geek, I actually think doing a chemistry experience can be a really great time."

"Well, there's nothing, umm, wrong with that," I mumbled, holding out a few packages in order to force Liz to get the 'unloading' over with more quickly... but that meant that I had to keep looking right in her direction, though I wasn't sure I wanted to look away. That would've been rude. "I... I think that I have to show you some of the fun side of wizardry once this assignment is done and I've recovered somewhat from whatever I have to go through to see you safely through it."

"Hmm... the fun side," Liz repeated softly. "What's that like?"

"Umm... tell you in a bit," I muttered, not wanting to go into too much detail around the cashier guy. It didn't take too long to pay him and reload all of the now-bagged stuff though, and as we headed out to the car I smiled at her. "The moon is a good one - the view of Earth hanging over the horizon near Kepler crater is kickass. And then - well, you want a real Roswell incident? Three worlds over, Roswell New mexico is really the alien capital of the planet - that planet made first contact with the Gorvraka back in the fifties, and there's a permanent extraterrestrial enclave in between town and their original crash site."

"Wha - wow," Liz admitted. "First off... three worlds over? You can slip between parallel earths or something using your wizardry, too?"

"Well, yeah. Haven't done too much of that myself, but it's probably easier to do that with the worldgates than travelling long distances or time travel."

"Okay, well... let's do the moon thing first," Liz said. "That sounds cool."

-------------

After going to the big grocery store, (picking up a few things that hadn't been on Isabel's list but sounded cool,) we headed back on the highway out to Frazier woods. The sun was starting to set in front of us as the city limit sign sped past. "Well, at least we don't need to worry about vampires," Liz muttered. I nodded, feeling relaxed in Liz's presence finally... and the pickup truck immediately behind my Jeep picked up speed and rammed into us before I could react.

"What the heck?" I muttered under my breath, trying to concentrate. It couldn't be a vampire driving... was this possibly unconnected to the threat against Liz? Some isolated case of sudden road rage? No, that didn't add up. Even if pickup guy wasn't going to kill us outright, if he could strand us out here, far away from our friends as night closed in, then I'd be unable to stand up against the pack of vampires without Isabel and Michael as backup. (And Maria, maybe even Alex should count.) The forces of darkness could twist an ordinary person's heart with rage too, or maybe even somebody had awakened a cruel heart within the truck itself.

BAMM. Another impact, not as hard because I'd been accelerating, hoping to avoid contact. Couldn't stop and think any more about the 'why', had to figure out some way to stop this guy. Unfortunately, driving and planning wizardries at the same time didn't seem like a good plan...

#Listen to me, Max! Come on, I'm using the speech, I know that you can hear me if you concentrate hard enough...#

#What the heck?# I answered by habit in the same dialect of the Speech, not even realizing who I was talking to. It was... it was mechanical. #Bob, is that you?# I've nicknamed my Jeep, but it seldom talks even if it can, and I'd never really expected it to speak up during a crisis like this. I was still managing to avoid the pickup, but didn't think I'd be able to do much at this rate. #What can... you do for me?# A bit brusque, but if the vehicle wasn't ready to help out at this point I didn't have any time or attention for it.

#First off, tell me to give Liz the second controls. I can't do that by myself.#

#What second controls?# Sheesh, no time to worry about that. #Yeah, do it!# With surprisingly little effort on my part and no more involved instructions in the speech, a steering wheel, gas pedal and brake suddenly appeared on the right side of the dash. After it happened, I finally remembered that ~~Michael had done a wizardry on the Jeep to get that sort of thing to happen as a sort of a joke - and as a practice exercise in working with advanced mechanics, he said. Certainly hadn't remembered that the wizardry had been left 'on standby' inside Bob, ready to go again with a word spoken, but it was REALLY handly now. "Okay, keep us going straight, and as fast as possible without losing control or crashing into somebody else," I told Liz.

"Who, me??" she squeaked slightly, having not expected this. Belatedly I realized that Liz didn't have her own car, and I'd never really seen her show up at school or anywhere else in her parent's wheels, so probably she was unused to driving frequently at least. But that didn't matter - she HAD to do her best now and free me up to work wizardry. If there was some sort of emergency, hopefully I could resume control and deal with it. So I let go of the wheel, and Liz grasped hers firmly, although her hands wobbled slightly at the start. I thought for a fraction of a second, and cast a 'wall of solid air' spell between our two vehicles, keeping pace with the Jeep, so that the next time the pickup truck tried to drive us off the road, it was repelled by solid nothing at all.

"Whew, okay, that's got us safe for now," I muttered, and looked over at Liz. "You doing okay there?" The jeep seemed to certainly be handling the two-lane road alright under Liz's control. Probably Bob was helping to keep himself driving straight. Hmm... why hadn't he just volunteered to handle the driving himself? Well, cars differed in their levels of 'awakeness', and I wasn't sure if he could handle the full KITT routine himself.

"Yeah, umm, I was a bit taken by surprise, but... I've had some practice with highway driving," she admitted. "Do we just let this joker follow us to the camp, if he can't hurt us anymore?"

"I... I'm not sure," I admitted. Keeping the wall of air up wasn't normally a strain, but keeping it moving at highway speeds was proving to be harder than I'd expected, and if I slipped with that it might fly into the pickup and cause a crash, and even if the truck or the driver were being used by the Enemy, I didn't really want to hurt either seriously. Was there some way that I could use wizardry to stop them from following without hurting them? Temporarily cripping the engine just enough to force them to pull over?

I struggled, but couldn't figure out a way. To cast a wizardry, you need to completely understand and describe what you're working with, and under these circumstances I wasn't entirely sure what model of pickup I had to disable, or what the engine schematics were. I could try calling them up in the manual's library on my new Pocket PC, but wasn't sure if I could focus on that and keeping the shield up at the same time. As tersely as possible, I explained these problems to Liz.

"Hmm," she muttered. "Can you keep the air shield up and take over driving?"

"Yeah, I guess so, why?"

"Just drive," she insisted, "and keep the shield transparent to heat energy." Once I put my hands to the steering wheel again, Liz picked up my noon-forged steel rod, which had been between us near the gearshift.

"Hey, you can't even use that," I protested, but Liz paid no attention. She pointed the rod out the window, craning herself around to face backwards - which meant that her butt was up out of the seat and pointing in my direction. To my surprise, a big curl of paint peeled off the front of the pickup. How was that possible? I... I don't think that the manual said that the properties of noon-forged steel could only be employed by wizards, but if they were available to anyone, surely something of that sort would be common knowledge among those who didn't even know about wizardry by now, right? Maybe it was only somebody who KNEW about the power that the sun lent such metal, which included wizards and friends. Hmm...

A few seconds later, Liz shot again, and took out one of the tires. That did it. There was the sound of creative swearing in English for a moment, (which suggested that it had been the driver who had been influenced to wreck us,) but the pickup drove to the shoulder and stopped there. Liz grinned as she buckled up again and returned my steel rod. "Whatcha think of that?" she asked.

"I think - that nobody should come back from camp into town until we've dealt with the vampires," I muttered somberly. "Assuming that that's possible. Otherwise, we convoy in as large numbers as we can manage to."

"Oh, you pooper," was Liz's reply.

"And - nice shooting," I had to admit.

"That's better."

#And thank you, Bob,# I said silently. He didn't reply.

----------

Dinner was getting close to ready by the time Liz and I got back. Michael and Isabel had arranged an odd kind of campfire soup or stew that was actually heated up in several different parts, with the intention of combining them into a big pot just before serving, which was unusual, but I didn't mind the idea specifically. Maria headed off to use the outhouse, and Alex went into his tent for a bit, so that Liz and I were - well, not alone, but the only ones in our specific area of the campsite. She'd packed a chess set before leaving yesterday night, apparently, and the two of us were idly fooling around with a sort of calvinball variant of the game - anyone who captured an enemy piece, or the player who hadn't last captured if twenty-five turns passed without a capture, was entitled to make a change to the rules, altering one piece's movement behaviour, for instance, or the options available on queening a pawn.

"How long did it take you to learn the speech?" Liz asked me idly.

"Umm... not quite sure how to answer that question," I admitted. "I still have a lot of vocabulary and grammary to master. But, well, I guess I was starting to put phrases together not long after I'd gotten the manual and taken the Oath. The beginner's speech tutorials are right up front, and there's not really much you can do that's interesting until you've at least learned some of the basics. I think that there might even be a bit of magic that helps a new wizard to learn a basic vocabulary in the speech quickly, if they're willing to put some effort into it."

"Okay, hmm," Liz said, cocking her head slightly. I guessed that she was weighing that answer against her expectations, and then decided that I'd answered the question well enough after all. "So, what's being a wizard like, when you're not stuck off in the woods bodyguarding the science club vice-president?"

I laughed softly, (trying not to give away how exciting it was to be sitting so close to the science club vice-president that I could reach out and touch her,) and thought about the question. "Fun sometimes, never boring, but occasionally painful or uncomfortable. Umm, maybe the Mars mission would be a good one to tell you about - it's not exactly typical of my active assignments, but..."

"You were sent to Mars?" she said, eyes shining.

"Yep. Topolsky actually called me out of geography class late in the morning for that," Liz giggled appreciatively. "There was a group of, well, of intelligent tree-people, who'd been touring some of the red planet, and they'd been lost in a rock fall. I never really figured out why they were important enough to rate such a quick response - I mean, wizards would probably help out anyone who got in trouble within our solar system, but there was something about how well this expedition was organized that makes me think it might have been something more. There were two different teams sent out to search, four or five people each, mostly human, with one cat, and a Varilan who happened to be close by and was called in because his people come from a planet that's not too unlike Mars, with a thicker atmosphere."

I told the story in quite a bit of detail, and then Michael called us over for dinner. Maria was back by this point, and Isabel called Alex several times before going into the tent and finding out that he'd nodded off, and wasn't too pleased that she'd woken him up for supper when he finally came back out. Dinner was also very quiet, as if everybody was hyper-aware of the point of this expedition again, and sensing the potential presence of vampires spreading over the woods as the sun set and the twilight faded out. Liz told the story of the pickup threatening us on the way back, and that was another downer.

Maria got to the point as Michael was serving out his second helping. "So, any notion if you'll have to do the tree thing tonight??"

Isabel and Liz both looked at me. "That's kinduv up to the vampires. If they attack us in sufficient numbers, then we... do what we have to do and hope it works out." Actually, I had high hopes, maybe not just hope, but it didn't seem smart to either speak too clearly or sound too confident, just on the off chance that there might be some spy about, too cleverly disguised for any of us to spot. And suddenly, thinking about spies reminded me of Maowah - I couldn't remember seeing him since lunch and the capture-the-flag game started. Well, maybe he was just catnapping - he'd had a long night, would probably want to be helping us watch out again now, and cats deal with a nocturnal schedule much better than we do. I looked around, tried to spot him, but couldn't.

"And if they send a smaller force, again, then you'll have to beat them back using conventional methods?" Alex confirmed. Isabel nodded.

"Let's talk about something else," Michael grunted. "Or do something else - it doesn't have to be talk."

"Like what?" Liz asked him.

"We could sing."

"SOME of us can sing," Isabel pointed out with a little laugh. "Not sure that what you do with your voice qualifies as singing, Michael." He shot a good scowl off at her, but that bounced off of her attitude without leaving a scratch. "Anyway, singalongs make more sense for after dinner than during, I think."

"Okay," I said. "Umm... anybody got interesting plans for Christmas holidays?"

"I'll be staying here in town, with my parents," Liz said. "Always, assuming, of course..." She broke off. "No, I'll be here." That made me smile, and Liz grinned at exactly the same moment.

"My parents were talking about heading out to California to visit with Aunt Louise," Alex put in. "Though actually, she's not my aunt, she's a first cousin once removed, but we decided that she was my favorite aunt when I was seven or something like that."

"I'll miss you, if you do actually go," Isabel put in. Maria rolled her eyes. I told them a bit about the family tradition of visiting Granma Evans in Tucuman on the second day after Christmas, and Maria said that she and her mom usually go to a trade show thing the weekend before Christmas, in Albuquerque. Everybody who wanted seconds finished cleaning their plates, and Isabel broke out some ice creamsicles and other treats from a cooler that she had reinforced with insulating wizardries, and in due time dessert was finished too.

"Oh, Maria, do you remember that song about, umm... about a boy going off to war?" Liz asked suddenly. Maria frowned slightly, and Alex got an odd expression on his face too. "With the bit about his father's swrod, oh... how did it go??"

Alex interrupted her, singing out clear and loud. "The minstrel boy to the war has gone, In the ranks of deah you will find him. His father's sword he has girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him." I looked over at Maria, and there was an odd frustrated conflict clearly visible on her face, which was suddenly resolved as she joined the song herself, using a harmony line that was higher than what Alex had been singing. Snuck a look at Liz, and she was clearly trying to keep from grinning too hard. Had she intentionally brought something from out of their past back up, trying to forge a reconciliation between Maria and Alex based on their shared love of music, even if it had been an argument about music, in a way, that had separated them before??

They went through three verses and then back to the first, with Isabel and Liz singing along too before long. I tried too, though I wasn't good at getting words straight in my mind just from hearing them. Michael started up 'Down by the bay' next, (off-key, yes, but the rest of us joined in anyway,) and there was a bit of a silence afterwards.

"Are... are there songs written with the lyrics in your wizardly language, Max?" Maria asked curiously.

I jumped at that, because it was a question that had never really occurred to me. I knew some wizards who were passionate about music, as well as those who were enthusiastic sculptors or painters. But the notion of combining the emotional power of music with the very physical power of the speech... there probably was, but I was a little scared of what might happen when such a song was sung.

"A few I think," Isabel replied. "There are passages in the Book of Night with Moon, from what I've heard, that incorporate tunes and parts as well as the words of the Speech."

"And the spell-songs of whale wizards, of course," Michael added in.

"But the speech is - well, it's something that's powerful, and its power has to be used carefully," I said.

"Yeah, I'm starting to understand that," Liz agreed. "But it doesn't need to be used just to heal wounds or fight vampires, right? What about healing a desolate spirit, or fighting despair? Music can do that even without your 'speech', but maybe it could do that even better with the powers behind wizardry helping it out. And that's a worthwhile thing, yeah?"

"I... I can't think of much that's more important, when you get right down to the heart of things," Isabel agreed.

But the three of us didn't know any song like that, and I didn't really feel like looking in my new manual to see if there was something like that in there, so we sang a few more traditional songs - campfire ballads and old eighties classics, one Beatles tune that everybody knew, and then things sort of broke up. Isabel and Alex volunteered to go with Maowah walking around some of the nearby paths, just to see if they could find any traces of what was going on tonight, and Liz said that she wanted to go out to the river and watch it in the moonlight a little, so I went with her, just in case.

"So what happens to us, after this weekend, Max?" Liz asked suddenly after sitting there for a long time. "Assuming that the... the plan works out okay, and my life isn't in danger anymore?"

"Hmm," I said, really considering it. "I... I don't think that we can be just casual friends and lab partners after something like that." Stepped close to her and crouched down. "I... I do hope that we could be better friends." Of course, there was an elephant squatting in the clearing near us, but I wasn't going to mention it first, even if there was this odd sense that we'd been through this conversation before.

"Is - is that all that you hope?" she said. I had to reach out to put my hand on the wooden block that she was sitting on to avoid falling over. "I... I hope that something more could happen between us, once the responsibility of protecting me is over and done with. That... that we could go out on a date maybe - get Chinese food, dance, play pool, and see where that leads."

"I... I'm interested in that," I admitted. "I - I think that I've had a crush on you for a while, Liz." She blinked. "And never really did anything about it because I was too afraid to. But - but I can't think too much about that sort of thing, even for 'after' - until after has arrived."

"Yeah, I guess that I can understand that," she said. "Come on, it's getting late, and we should probably set up the shifts soon so that everybody has as much time to sleep as possible." She reached out her hand to take mine, and I let her, the two of us walking up the path side by side.

And then we stopped, in unison. Most of the way around the dying fire, it was easy to see that Michael and Maria were kissing, and not just friendly kisses. Their lips were locked in passion, and one of his hands was running through her hair.

"Okay, that I did *NOT* expect," Liz admitted under her breath.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	7. Chapter 7

Part Seven

Michael and Maria continued to kiss like nobody's business for several seconds, and then belatedly Michael realized that they had company and started to break things off. "I, umm, I was just doing something else to occupy her lips, since there didn't seem to be any other way to get Maria to STOP TALKING," he said, with more than a little real annoyance in those last few words. She does seem to be good at inspiring that reaction, not that I can really say from personal experience.

"Oh please," Maria replied, rolling her eyes. Liz shot her a pointed look. "What? A little diversion, to somewhat-pleasantly pass the time."

"Just somewhat?" Michael shot back.

"Okay, come on, let's not get into the full play-by-play recap here," I said. "We need to set up night watches now, and I guess you guys join the list of they who shouldn't be on watch together because you'll get distracted."

"And are you and Liz on that list too?" Maria said pointedly. "Because if so, that would seem to include everybody, and if not, you're being a bit hypocritical."

"Umm, yeah, probably better safe than sorry," Liz agreed. "But we don't really need to watch in pairs anyway, and if so, we can set up *different* pairs. Umm... speaking of which just where ARE Alex and Isabel? We can't really do this without them."

"We can make the decisions for them without them," Michael argued back. "But we need to get them back, to watch or to actually sleep, anyway, so yeah."

"Weren't they patrolling the area, with that cat?" Maria put in.

"Oh, yeah," I muttered. "If they're actually on the watch, then that's valuable."

"Hmm... why don't you go open mind to her, Maxwell?" Michael tossed in. "See how alert to danger she is?"

"Open mind??" Maria said, sighing.

"It's kind of a side effect of working in partnership as Wizards," I said. "What you can understand well, you can sense at a distance - and that includes the thoughts inside a good friend's head - or a sister's." I sighed too, because I wasn't wild about the thought of receiving Isabel's impressions if she really was making out with Alex - and Michael of course knew this - it was why he'd brought up the idea in the first place. He's nearly as close to both Isabel and I as we are to each other, but I don't think he's ever seen her in that big-brotherly way. In fact, maybe ten months ago I think Michael was jockeying for the inside track on her affections, but Isabel never seemed to give him an opening.,,

Without even meaning to, I suddenly realized that I was in mental contact with Isabel - or she was in contact with me, and there was DEFINITELY no kissing going on between Alex and she. *Maowah's picked up some traces coming out past the city limits. Hard to be sure at this range, but I think that we've got the magic number of vampires coming to pay a visit on us.*

"Ooh." I looked around, and caught Michael's eye, wondering if he'd been in on that message from my sister at all, but he seemed to be still waiting to see what I'd do. "Okay, change of plans I think - nobody's going to sleep yet. We may have action very soon."

"Really?" Michael frowned. "Who gave you the word - the Dog?"

"No, Isabel - from Maowah, actually." Of course, just because the vampires were leaving town, didn't mean that they'd be attacking terribly soon, but somehow I felt that much in an intuitive flash. We certainly had to prepare for the possibility that they would - and then if they were clearly stalling, we could try standing down the red alert into a regular night watch... or something in between, like a yellow alert, if that seemed to be called for.

"They're heading back," Liz put in, and Maria and Michael looked funny at her. "I can hear their footsteps coming down the path, at a good clip."

"Alright. Maxwell, what're the requirements for this tree spell, anyway?"

"Shouldn't he wait until Isabel's here too?" Liz put in.

"Oh, maybe Michael's a bit slow and he needs to get it repeated," Maria put in, which earned her a truly dirty glare from my friend.

"You and, umm. you and Iz will be the secondaries, and really all you need to do is join in the chant," I hedged. "And help me draw the circle, of course - we'd probably better work on that too."

"Kay, got it," Michael muttered, though he had an expression on his face as if he knew I was being evasive. (I was - I didn't want him or Isabel to know what the oldest tree had told me about swearing to pay the price. That had to be all on me.) "Just the three of our names in the circle?"

"No, I think everybody needs to get listed - so that they can be inside, and protected," I put in. "I've got Liz's down, and I'm sure that Isabel knows Alex's by now, so umm..." I thought about asking Michael to do it, and figured that that might be asking for trouble. "Quick questionnaire time, Maria - this is important."

"Couldn't you have done it earlier, if you knew you'd need to cast this spell sooner or later?" Maria complained, and I couldn't argue with that comment. "Besides, if I'm inside the circle, doesn't that mean that I can't help protect Liz?"

"Maybe, but it means that we don't need to worry about protecting YOU," Michael insisted. "Either from the vampires, or the trees who might not be too cautious about who's in their way once they finally get up, ready to kick ass."

"One way or another, I'm going to need to know your name in the speech," I said to Maria. "Come on - this is the short form system, but still we're going to need to get started.

So I read off the 'human being name wizard' from my new computerized manual, (the same kind of 'wizard' that any other computer would have to lead someone through a complicated task, though I think that the manual software enjoys using the term a bit ironically,) and entered in Maria's answers, while Michael started marking out a large circle in arcs and characters of pure light that couldn't be scuffed away from the ground of our campfire clearing. Isabel and Alex showed up about halfway through Maria's naming, and Isabel opened up her own manual and pitched in with the circle, though she got a nervous look on her face too from something that she was reading.

Soon the spell diagram was complete, names and all, and I had a moment to breathe and look around. "They're not on my wards yet - hanging back?" Something horrible occurred to me. "If there's any way that they were able to tell what we've been up to..."

"Impossible, bud." Michael smiled. "We've been operating on a privacy spell ever since you mentioned the words 'magic number'. Think I'd leave out a detail like that?" I nodded at him gratefully.

*And the living undead may still be far away, but they're continuing to approach, and not showing any signs of slowing more than would indicate 'minimal caution',* Maowah put in. *Specifically, they parked a few miles away from the borders of the park, and are hiking towards the edge of the trees.*

"Right," Isabel put in. "Max, when we do this, how MANY of the trees will wake up? Is the effect directed or undirected??"

"Semi-directed, with a maximum range of somewhere between a quarter-mile and half," I muttered.

"Ooh." Isabel looked around at the dark forest. "Lotta big trees within even a quarter mile of this spot."

"Yeah, but to make sure that none of the vampires escape destruction - I think we're going to have to wait until the first of them enter the clearing at least - and hope that they don't spread out too much," Michael muttered, less optimistically.

"Yeah, I think I agree," I muttered. "No sense starting the spell until they're closer than this, even if they can't tell."

"Yeah." Isabel picked up a log and took it over to the fire.

"No, don't do that," Alex suggested. She blinked at him.

"Why not?"

"Vampires are nervous about fire, right? It can hurt them." I nodded when Alex brought this up. "So they'll be more likely to move in quickly and not hesitate if the fire is starting to burn low."

"Unless it makes them clue in that we've set a trap," Maria said, probably just in order to be contrary.

"Yeah, well... I think as long as the fire doesn't go out entirely we're not being too obvious," I said. "Leave it for now - actually, maybe put a few small pieces and some sticks on - they'll keep things going without really adding too much heat or light." Isabel sighed and went along with this.

"Okay, they're on my radar now," I muttered a few minutes later. "Nothing else showing up, except... huh." Shook my head. Started sending out my thoughts. *There's a vague sense of darkness, and it's pretty close. Nobody mention the cracker-jack surprise - we'll have to co-ordinate to do it together, but leave that nonverbal as much as possible - just do it.*

*A... a sense of darkness?* That was Isabel. *Could it be... be inside one of us?* She was clearly panicked by the thought. Having one of your wizard friends be 'overshadowed' - possessed by a power of the darkness, possibly even THE power of darkness, without their knowledge, was easily the number one secret fear of all teenage wizards, as far as I could tell. Maybe it's not limited to teenagers - and I guess possibly getting overshadowed yourself would rank up there too. All related, though.

*I... I don't think so,* Michael put in. *I've got a bit of a line on it too, and it's more like something that's all around us.*

*Will the trees be able to fight it, then?* Isabel put in.

*No, but I'm not sure that it can do anything directly,* I countered. *Just a spy sending, maybe, on behalf of the vampire's master. As long as we don't let it find out anything important, there's nothing else to worry about.*

*But could it keep us from getting into the spell diagram at the right moment, maybe?* I nearly whirled around to look for the source of this new thought, because it was faintly familiar, but not one that was second nature to hear like Isabel's and Michael's mental voices. Somehow that meant it had to be...

*LIZ?* Okay, this was getting seriously weird. What was up with all of these odd abilities she was showing without even realizing it - and did they have anything to do with the contract that was out on her life?

*Don't shout, Max,* Isabel replied. *You've been including her in this since you started.*

*How is that even possible, if she's not... not one of us?* I insisted. *Maybe I could project to her, just possibly, but that doesn't explain how she can talk back silently...*

*Guys, argue about it later,* Michael sent shortly. *They're getting close, and Liz's notion was pretty good. Let's get ready for ac...*

"Hey, what the freak is going on?" Maria put in. "What else were you sensing, Max? Why did everyone suddenly go all quiet?"

"They're just planning everything silently," Alex replied in a whisper. "Don't bug them... oh?" Isabel had silently started to guide him into the circle. I looked over at Maria, and Liz seemed to be taking care of her good friend. So that was that.

We had the diagram. We had the words, both the secondary chant that everybody would be reciting and the parts that I would say alone - as the soloist, as it were. (Huh - would Liz's comments about the speech and music be always in my mind when preparing a spell now?) There were also somatic-mode speech elements to the spell - precise gestures that had to be timed in with the words, and also physical ingredients, nothing too fancy - stone and earth, stream water and air. The air had to be 'captured' - set apart from what was around us, so I'd closed up a small plastic container, figuring that whatever air happened to be inside it when the seal was made would do well enough.

We could hear the vampires - a baker's dozen of them according to my ward sense, before they slowed at all. I stayed silent, hoping that they wouldn't hope to spread out before moving in closer. They did start to range more widely, but I was pretty sure that eleven of them at least would be within the range of the spell by the time one, and then another, stepped into the clearing. "You know what we're here for, little wizard," he said, using English, which didn't surprise me. He was probably fluent in the speech, in a way, but I don't think any vampire liked using it.

*Yeah - just you and your friend?* Michael taunted, deliberately using the words of the creation out loud, (well, not quite - it's not like he was in the Enactive Recension or anything... but allow me a bit of poetic license here? No - don't ask what Enactive is... it's not really that important.) Umm, where was I? Right, he was doing it deliberately to provoke the vampires. *We could mop you up without even batting an eye and leave your friends out there to sweep up the dust.*

"Then why don't you do it, buddy?" the other vampire sneered, stepping a pace closer. "Because to me it looks like all three of you and your little friends are cowering behind a wizard's wall, and none of your attacks will even work through it. But that won't hold us for long, and even if you manage to get a few lucky shots in once we batter down the shield, that's effort that the rest of the pack won't need to go thr..."

ZZAP!! The vamp staggered back, badly hurt with a smoking hole exposing his collarbone - I turned over my shoulder to see that Liz had taken out the ion blaster and fired it. She grinned fiercely at both of her would-be killers, who were stunned that the blast had been able to hit them - or one of them.

Unfortunately, the first vampire to speak figured out what that meant all too soon. "The damn wall isn't even up yet!" he called, and his words carried through the forest. "Get 'em now, before..."

The second vampire, who had been wounded, struggled to pull out some kind of a weapon of his own, but by this time we were ready. With the first few words of the preliminary invocation, spoken in unison, a protective barrier sprang into being at the edge of the spell diagram - what the one vampire had called a 'wizard's wall.' Something very small pinged off of it - not a bullet or an arrow - probably a little needle or sliver of metal, most likely coated in poison. Snarling, the vampires both hurried forward to the edge of the diagram - they'd try to use their natural resistance to wizardry to bash their way in, but since the barrier wasn't an active offensive wizardry, it'd take them some time.

While speaking this new spell, to summon the trees, I had to let go of the ward-sense of where the other vampires are, but that couldn't stop me from wondering about them - and in which direction they were heading. Towards us, to help their friends get in and attack us, or away to get out of range? Surely some of them would have realized that we wouldn't only set up a protective defense... but if they weren't used to wizardry being an effective weapon against them, then maybe they just weren't taking what I would do seriously. Preliminaries done, and I started my first 'solo part' - a soliloquy in the Speech, imploring the trees to come to our aid, and offering my own self and energy as collateral for the effort and transition it would take them to rise and walk in this situation. Isabel gasped as she started to take in the meaning of what I was promising, but I didn't let that stop me. Inspired by Liz, I actually started to sing the words instead of speaking them - not improvising a tune by human standards, but using the musically-themed speech of some crystal life form that I'd looked up a long time ago.

Opened up the tiny vial of stream water, and sprinkled it upon the soil. Michael and Isabel joined into the chant. I could definitely feel the spell barrier trembling from the impact of vampires - four or five of them had gathered around us now - and they were charging at the circle at full pelt, so as to maximize the effect of their anti-magical presence I guess, using their own bodies like undead battering rams. Just after I'd finished releasing the air and crumbling the stone into fragments, one of them managed to penetrate and was INSIDE with us, standing on the diagram, within a few feet of Liz herself. I nearly stopped reciting one of the injunctions - a supplication to the ground to suffer itself to be waded through by trees - but Isabel reached out and squeezed my fingers with hers, and I understood. The only thing that I could do for Liz was to keep going. I focused on the words of the spell and kept talking.

As it happened, the danger of having an enemy inside with us didn't last for long. I didn't know what was going on at the time, but in the interest of telling the story clearly I'll use a little hindsight, because I'm not quite sure how to explain what I was aware of in any way that you'd understand. Michael and Maria caught each other's eyes, and even though neither of them could explain afterwards that they knew quite what the other was planning, they managed to each to absolutely the right thing at the right moment.

Maria did something that was half a bullfighting tick and half a judo throw against the vampire, standing in his path to lure him on until the last moment and then hip-throwing him into the far side of the diagram. At the same moment. Michael instructed the barrier at that spot to become passable for just a moment, (I guess that the vampires didn't realize that we could use that level of control, or they'd have realized that the bit about us not being able to attack them while our 'shield' was up wasn't really so.)

As for me, well, I heard Maria's *kiai* scream, and felt another hole open up in the barrier - wasn't really too sure whether it was another vampire trying to come in or not. As Isabel and Michael joined in on the last unison part of the spell, I realized that there wasn't a vampiric presence inside the circle with us anymore, and then... and then the trees began to respond.

At first it was sort of subtle, with the branches waving as if there were just a fierce wind blowing through the Frazier valley, and nothing more. And then, their roots began to shift, which was more impressive, because it was clear that either the trees were getting up and walking, or there was something like an earthquake-mudslide going on, either of which would be scary. At least one of the nearby vampires looked up, concerned. A tree lurched towards them, and then more, staggering through the ground like they hadn't expected to be doing this, but fiercely badass nonetheless.

The first tree that actually attacked a vampire was around twenty-five feet high or so - grabbing his arms and his upper body with branches, then trying to tear off his head with another. The vamp managed to free one arm and tear away the branch wrapping around his head, but then the spike of broken-off wood that was left plunged down and buried it into his chest - forming itself into a stake of living wood. Straight through his heart. The vampire collapsed unmoving after that cruel spear was retracted.

I looked around and realized that similar fights were happening all over - and that the vampires were way overmatched. I had read of other tree battles before - there's one mentioned in the manual, involving Central Park in New York and a few kids who'd been on Ordeal in a parallel universe ruled by an Avatar of the lone one, but I've never been clear on just how long ago it happened. Anyway, usually those fights seemed to be fairly evenly matched. This was a slaughter. (At least it was the side of light that had the upper hand!)

In less than a minute, there wasn't a vampire left undead. I struggled to re-establish my ward sense, just to make sure that there weren't any vamps who had escaped, or fighting going on out of sight of the spell diagram, and by then the nearby trees were parting to let one of their own come through - the thick and gnarled old tree from the dream conversation I had had. *Thank you, Master Tree,* I said - still standing in the spell diagram, not because I thought I needed its protection anymore, but because I was still driving the magic that kept them moving. *You have fulfilled your side of the bargain excellently. I hope that I shall be able to repay my debt as well.*

*Part of that debt has been paid off by the powers that be,* the trees, surprisingly, responded in chorus from all around me. *Though this event might not seem so significant, they who have assigned you to protect Parker have also approved our aid in this fashion. But do not forget the words you have spoken here tonight.*

*No, I won't,* I insisted. *Goodnight, and good growing to you all.*

*Take your places again now,* Isabel advised. *For even our wizardries will not keep you standing on your roots long, now that the danger is past.*

*So be it.* And the trees shuffled around somewhat and sank back into the earth - though I couldn't help thinking that some of them had taken advantage of the opportunity to shift positions somewhat from where they had been before the spell started.*

"And that's it?" Alex asked, once the spell had been dismantled and we'd started cleaning up the disarray in our campsite left over from the brief melee. "Liz is safe now?"

"One way to check," Michael muttered, and opened up his manual to a page near the front - obviously he was going for 'ongoing and recently completed missions.' Maria and Liz both looked over his shoulder - Maria turned away in disgust after a few seconds, realizing that it was still in a language she couldn't read, while Liz seemed oddly fascinated by the pages. "Mission accomplished - without those vampires, the dark presence in Roswell won't be able to press home an attack on Liz, and will try to consolidate strength and build up new vampire recruits."

"Sounds like we'll be busy," Isabel muttered. "And speaking of dark presences - is our eavesdropper gone?"

I checked. "Yeah, seems so."

"The big bad'un is probably throwing a huge rage fit right now, that his incompetent minions weren't able to kill one simple little girl," Alex mused. "And I'm very glad of it."

"But, isn't there a possibility that he'll try for Liz later, like months from now?" Maria put in.

"I suppose that's always a possibility," Michael agreed. "We know that there's a risk, and we'll always be willing to help. But this bodyguard mission was about a particular window of opportunity to kill her, I think, and we've slammed the window shut."

"Thanks guys," Liz insisted. "So what happens now?"

"Well, I think we go into our tents and sleep," I pointed out. "May head back into town a little earlier than planned tomorrow, though I think maybe we can actually enjoy the time out here in the woods instead of just worrying about dark danger the whole time."

"Should head on over to River Dog's for a debriefing," Isabel put in. "He's got the synopsis from the manual network already, I'm sure, but he appreciates a personal meet-up now and then."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I have a few questions to ask him too - nothing too important."

"Alright," Liz said, heading back towards the big girls' tent. "Does River Dog use a manual himself? It doesn't seem to fit with that native-american-mystic deal he's got going on."

"No, Indian wizards work more like the Irish ones," Michael said absently. "A lot of rote memorization and direct mental contact with the manual network."

"You're not supposed to call them Indians anymore, Michael," Maria told him. "That's just people who actually come from the Indian subcontinent in Asia..."

----------

"Okay, my turn," Liz said, tossing the two of clubs out onto the small wooden table we were gathered around. "So, that's it from River dog, 'yep you did well?'"

"Way it usually goes in this business," Isabel said, playing high with the ace. "There's too much going on to hand out effusive kudos - and sometimes it gives you a swelled head, messing you up on another job down the road." She sighed.

"It was really the trees who did well," I added honestly. "I did more-or-less-okay at keeping you safe until they could do their thing, no more." I sighed. "And I think River Dog has his hands full with something else, though I haven't been cleared for many details. Either that or it's really complicated - the precis on the pocket PC certainly doesn't make much sense to me."

"Did you ask for more details?" Alex asked. "And, um, play a card."

"What?" I jumped slightly, and realized that I had been so busy talking I hadn't played. Tossed on the king of clubs, Alex played the Jack, and Isabel gathered the cards, (which wouldn't cost her any points,) and started to ponder her next play. "Yeah, I tried to access more info, but I'm not sure if I'm not authorized to view the info, or I'm just not asking the right way."

"It's a magic computer system," Isabel informed me, playing a low spade. I hesitated, and put on the ten. I didn't have many spades, and the king was dangerous, but I couldn't play it now in case Alex or Liz had the black Mary. "Can't you just ask it for what you need in plain words, instead of trying to find the right spot to tap with the stylus or whatever?"

"Yeah, that normally works," I agreed. Wanted to change the subject, so I turned to Liz, who beat my ten with the ace of spades - lucky her for being last to play to a spade trick. "Do you think it'll be hard to get back to life as normal, now that you know so much about wizardry and vampires and so on?"

"Come on, Max, this is Roswell," she put in with a little smile. "What's so great about normal?"

"It seems pretty safe, in comparison with not-normal," Alex pointed out, considering the diamonds that the two of us had played to Liz. I guessed that he would have dumped a heart on Isabel, except something was holding him back - either Isabel's likely reaction, or the fact that it would have freed her to lead low hearts if she had any. Maybe both. Played off the jack of spades instead. "I know that you don't want me getting involved with this stuff right away, honey - and that's alright with me, actually. I'll help again if I can, but... but I don't want to get too involved with this stuff while I can't protect myself."

"Well, umm..." I think Isabel wasn't quite sure how to answer. "Maybe that's for the best... wait a second, who dumped on me?" She looked at the new batch of cards. "Parker??"

"You could have seen that I'd played a heart before you went high," Liz argued back. "If you'd been paying attention." She sighed. "Speaking of self-protection, what about that blaster? Should I give it back?" She hesitated, took a clean trick of clubs, and led out spades. "Maybe Alex can take it."

"No, that's better staying with you, you used it well," Isabel told her. "Under the heading of 'just in case some other surprise happens.'"

"Alright I guess." Liz dumped the queen of spades onto Alex with a bit of a nasty grin. "Lunch is gonna be pretty good, won't it??"

-----------

Lunch sucked actually, which qualified as a minor surprise I suppose. No fault of the food or Michael and Maria's work in preparing it, but suddenly a cold front washed in, bringing a depressing drizzle of rain along with it, so nobody was comfortable. We ended up heading back into town at around two-thirty in the afternoon, and Isabel suggested that everyone could meet with their parents and then head back to our place in the evening for an impromptu party. I was a little surprised that she'd suggested it, but didn't object at all - anything that would give me a chance to spend some time alone with Liz, I suppose. Maybe Isabel meant it that way.

Met up with Valenti and Topolsky again in the afternoon, and a few other local wizards who I didn't know that well, just to debrief them on the vampire thing, since they were the ones who'd have to be leading further operations here in town unless it was a really serious situation. I also mentioned the stuff about Liz using the speech spontaneously, and sending out mind-talk, and my wonders about whether that had anything to do with the reasons someone wanted her dead. Valenti admitted that I had a point, but neither of them seemed to want to add anything else. And there was some homework to keep me busy during the late hours of the afternoon, and so on. Real life keeps coming up with stuff to take up your time.

-----------

"Hi, Max," Liz said, when I stepped out of the back door and under the porch roof - the rain was still coming down, pretty hard for a desert town like Roswell. "I hoped that you'd come join me."

"Yeah, I sortuv got that impression when you waited inside the door for me to come into the kitchen before heading out," I said, smiling. "That you were giving us a chance to be alone together. Thanks."

"And you're finally off the clock now, mister bodyguard," she said, turning to me slightly and stepping closer. "Have I mentioned how glad I am that all of this happened, so that... so that I could get to know you better, like I have?"

"Hmm... no, not in so many words," I replied. "And it seems a bit weird when you put it like that - there has to have been an easier way in which the two of us could have gotten acquainted."

"I dunno, we could have spent more time together, working on a school project, or getting involved in the same club," she said softly, still looking out at the rain more than at me. "But - but I don't think that either of those things would have gotten me any info on your little secret. And without that - without this thing that is so big a part of your life, that you hardly share with anyone else around you, I wouldn't have been able to figure you out, I think."

"Oh." I considered that a bit, looked over at her, and caught her shooting a stray glance over at me in the same moment. "Well, I *am* glad that you know."

"Good." Now Liz turned away from the wet night, and her eyes caught mine so firmly that there was no possible escape. Without saying another word, she kissed me passionately, and her body seemed to melt in my arms, except that it was also firm and alive with physical energy. "Max, Tuesday night. Are you free for... sheesh, I dunno, for dinner and a movie?"

"Of course, absolutely," I breathed. "You - you just couldn't wait for me to ask, could you?"

"I wasn't sure if you'd be too shy to make your move," Liz teased me, and let her lips brush against mine again, with just an echo of the intensity of the previous kiss. "Can't wait. Meet tomorrow morning at school?"

I swallowed. "Yeah, fine." I started trying to figure out what would be the first reasonable moment to ask her if she wanted to have lunch in the caf with me, so that she couldn't beat me to that one as well.

"Great, see you then." And she headed inside again, and was chatting with Maria within a few seconds.

-------------

"Nothing else up on the schedule?" Michael asked, much later on Sunday evening, as we left the computer behind, having finished a fun session on neverwinter knights. "No friends of the family who have to be saved from cancer, or cultural exchange trips to take you halfway across the galaxy?"

"Not a thing," I insisted to him. "There might be an attempt to take the fight to the surviving vampires or find out something about their mysterious boss, but Valenti said that none of us should be part of that, after what we've done already. If anybody realizes that we were involved, then it'd probably be more intimidating for us to stay behind in reserve."

"...Instead of joining the action, and letting them realize that we don't really have any secret weapon to use against their kind, unless we happen to be in a wooded place," Michael agreed. "Okay, fair enough. Just wondering... I hate it when things get dull around here."

My ears perked slightly as we headed towards the living room, because I could tell the familiar rhythms of someone reciting something. Isabel doing a spell? No, it was in English, not the speech, though the words were familiar. It was Liz's voice, I realized, and as I stepped through the doorway, I could suddenly make out the tail end of the passage.

"...are threatened. To this end, in the practice of the art, will I put aside death for life, and fear for courage - when it is right to do so. Looking always unto the heart of time, where all of our sundered worlds are made whole, and until time's end." Liz had been reading off the screen of my new Wizard's manual PDA, and I hadn't needed to make out the words to realize what she'd been reciting.

The wizard's oath. If Liz could bring herself to pronounce those words, then there had been an offer of the powers of wizardry to her, and she was bound by her acceptance. There was no reading out the oath 'just for fun' even among those who had first taken it long ago. And I could sense the truth of it, that there were now - well, four teenage wizards in the room, since Isabel had also been staring at Liz as she read, and Michael just followed me through the door.

Liz was a wizard too, a probationary one at the moment. Very soon, in a few days' time or a week at most, she would get sent out on her ordeal - a terrible solo challenge against the same forces who had sent the shooter and the vampires against her - and this time, I would be unable to protect her. Very little assistance could be given to a wizard on Ordeal, because the central problem was something that only that person could resolve. Could Liz possibly have understood what she was getting herself into?

She turned to me, big smile on her face. "Hey, Max -- I think it worked!!"

I didn't manage to stifle my groan.

THE END... for now...


End file.
